Professor Luc Bidaut

Luc Bidaut moved to Dundee in July 2010 as Chair of Translational Imaging and Director of Imaging for the Centre of Oncology and Molecular Medicine. In March 2011, Luc Bidaut was named Head of the Imaging & Technology Core Group, a new construct that regroups all related entities under a common virtual umbrella.

From January 2005 until July 2010, Luc Bidaut was the founding Director of the Image Processing and Visualization Laboratory (IPVL) at the University of Texas' M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston, TX-USA. Additionally, he was the Head of the Scientific Computing Resource (SCR) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Imaging Physics.

Before coming to M. D. Anderson, Prof. Bidaut was Associate Attending/Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Medical Physics as well as the founding Technical Director for Advanced Imaging at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, NY-USA. Prior to that he was project leader and founding Director of the Laboratory of Functional and Multidimensional Imaging (LFMI) in the Departments of Radiology and Surgery at the University Hospitals in Geneva-Switzerland. Previously, he was a co-founder and the Head of Instrumentation, Imaging and Data Processing for the PET and Biomedical Cyclotron center at the Free University's Erasme Hospital in Brussels-Belgium. For several years prior to that, he was R&D and Computer Scientist in the Division of Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), USA where he had moved after working on PET and SPECT R&D at the Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot in Orsay-France

Throughout his career in Europe and the US, Prof. Bidaut's main interests have centered on designing, developing, implementing and exploiting new tools, approaches and entities for extracting, combining, visualizing and maximizing the utility of information that can be collected from various medical modalities and sensors such as PET, SPECT, CT, MR, EEG, etc. These concepts - that can be defined in a nutshell as "advanced quantitative imaging" - span the whole spectrum of micro to animal to humans and are eminently relevant to research as well as to translational and clinical applications.

 Prof. Bidaut’s primary goals lie in the development, implementation and application of advanced quantitative imaging and visualization techniques that fit either or both clinical and research paradigms, whether for diagnosis, assessment and characterization of disease or for the many sides and ancillaries of therapy. Accordingly, his main objectives are to develop, implement and exploit sophisticated processing and imaging concepts beyond standard radiological 2D review and to provide a functional gateway between research, translational and clinical applications.

 

His research is principally directed towards furthering the understanding, application and exploitation of biomedical imaging in its broadest sense. Of primary importance is understanding what each imaging modality can bring to this compound concept, as well as determining the best way to extract and analyze relevant information from the data at hand in order to present it accessibly to lay end-users. The scope of this research includes the human, animal and even microscopic sides of biomedical imaging along with its clinical and research exploitation.

 

Central to this research is the following non-exhaustive list of topics:

·          Advanced biomedical imaging

·          Multidimensional imaging and visualization

·          Image segmentation

·          Multimodality and hybrid imaging

·          Image registration and fusion

·          Image-guided therapy

·          Interventional planning and monitoring

·          Quantitative/parametric imaging

·          Functional and Molecular imaging (e.g., positron emission tomography and others)

·          Modeling and simulation

·          Scientific visualization

·          High-Performance Visualization and Computing

 

Corollary to these core interests is the strategising that is associated with implementing and furthering such concepts through the mixing of disciplines that do not traditionally interact with each other, and by fostering and pulling together resources that require complementary support from diverse entities.

 As overarching theme of Prof. Bidaut’s clinical interests, advanced quantitative imaging is a concept that naturally lends itself to most aspects of disease characterization and therapy management - from diagnosis and therapy planning to delivery and response assessment - especially for complex diseases such as cancer. This in turn contributes to the overall advancement of biomedical imaging as a valid and fundamental component of new biomarkers. Clinical areas and disciplines of interest are ones that can either contribute to or exploit advanced imaging approaches and paradigms, either directly or indirectly. Such areas include imaging modalities and protocols as well as the diagnosis and characterization of disease. They also include therapy and interventional planning along with guidance and response assessment for routine or trial treatment. While medical disciplines like radiology, surgery, oncology and radiation therapy are obvious consumers of the products of such approaches, other disciplines - including engineering and basic sciences - are also crucial to furthering these concepts and broadening the scope of their applications.