Ron Alterovitz
Location: (Chapel Hill, NC)
Personal Research Web Page: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~ron
Keywords: motion planning, robotics, medical robotics, optimization, planning under uncertainty, virtual environments, surgical simulation, physically-based simulation, finite element method, tissue modeling, image registration, treatment planning
Posted on: Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Broad Research Area: AI / Machine Learning / Robotics / Vision, Computer Science Education / Educational Technology, Graphics / Visualization, HCI / CSCW, Numerical/Scientific Computing / HPC / Data-Intensive Scalable Computing, Other, Scientific/Medical Informatics
Research Interests:
My research focuses on developing motion planning algorithms and physically-based simulations for medical applications, including treatment planning, medical image registration, and physician training. My research spans the following areas:
(*) Motion Planning for Medical Robotics: The objective of motion planning in medical robotics is to compute actions that will guide a surgical device around anatomical obstacles to reach a clinical target. We are developing new motion planning algorithms using optimization and sampling-based methods. These motion planning algorithms must address key challenges that arise in medical applications, including deformations, uncertainty, and optimality.
(*) Physically-based Medical Simulation: Human soft tissues are heterogeneous and have nonlinear properties, resulting in complex deformations during clinical procedures. Using finite element methods and mesh maintenance algorithms, we are developing simulations of soft tissues and their interaction with medical devices. These simulations can assist physicians in registering diagnostic and treatment images obtained at different times, and can also be used for interactive physician training and procedure planning.
Contact Information:
E-mail: email obfuscated - click to reveal
Web page: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~ron
