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The body of research relating to perception and interpretation of medical images has generated a range of impacts on the practice and training of radiologists and reporting radiographers, with resultant benefits for patients. Engagement with the research findings has raised awareness in clinical practitioners of the implicit strategies they use during medical image interpretation and in particular the type and frequency of errors, including the prevalence of decision-making mistakes over issues of pathology perception. Practitioners have benefited through considering their individual strategies, leading to enhanced decision making processes and reducing error rates in interpretation of 2D and 3D images.
The impact has been achieved through engagement with the sector through relevant professional bodies, practitioner orientated publications and direct involvement of the research team in training and development activities for practitioners.
The impact of the research on practitioner diagnostic strategies is applicable across all areas of radiology and diagnostic radiography, but is also being explicitly pursued to determine training methods and assessment when radiologists view 3D Computed Tomography Colonography data for bowel cancer.
UCL's research has led to changes in patient care for men with prostate cancer, through the implementation of less invasive, image-directed treatment and diagnostic strategies, and clinical trials that use these techniques. The use of medical image registration software to deliver high- intensity ultrasound therapy in a targeted manner has been shown to change the treatment plan in half of the patients participating in a clinical study. New biopsy criteria are now used routinely to classify patient risk at University College Hospital, where, since 2009, clinicians have determined the treatment options for more than 741 prostate cancer patients. The scheme has been adopted, by 15 other hospitals in the UK and internationally, where it has become the recommended standard of care, and has been used to treat more than 1,200 patients.
About 18% of UK electric supply is provided by 14 graphite-moderated Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) and 1 Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). The AGRs are graphite-moderated, generic in design and the nuclear regulator is concerned that a common safety related fault could lead to immediately shutdown of all AGRs. The development of novel techniques at Manchester has allowed the continued operation helping the operators to establish an expected seven-year life extensions for all AGRs. For the plant operators this represents a potential income of £2.5bn per annum, avoid 30m tonnes CO2 pa and generate supply chain income within the UK of £650m pa and create or protect 2000 jobs.
Research undertaken at UEA developed revolutionary algorithms for making pictures look better. These algorithms were subsequently engineered into prize winning desktop and embedded applications, resulting in the creation of the spinout company, Imsense Ltd., in 2006.
In July 2010, Imsense Ltd. was acquired by [text removed for publication] and the Imsense technology has now been incorporated into [text removed for publication] product pipeline.
RTT (Real Time Tomography) scanning systems for airport baggage are becoming increasingly important due to growing air traffic and greater security concerns. Prior to our research, Rapiscan, a leading producer of baggage scanners, had been unable to make full use of the hardware in their latest generation of scanner prototypes. Our novel theory and image reconstruction algorithms are now a core part of a commercially successful 3D scanner that is significantly faster and more accurate than previous generations. The two models, RTT80 and large RTT110, have been approved by regulatory authorities and have already been field trialled at Manchester Airport and deployed at Seattle airport, with further US$20m orders placed.
The research and impact described herein was flagged in the citation for the UoM's 2013 Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its work in imaging techniques to support advanced materials and manufacturing.
Key advances in the earlier diagnosis of cancer, leading to better treatment and higher survival rates, have resulted from the commercialisation of unique imaging software that exploits research from the Department of Engineering Science. The software products that came from this research, Volpara™, XD and XRT are now used at major cancer centres worldwide (with approximately 1100 software installations), aiding treatment of tens of thousands of patients every year. Between 2009 and July 2013, Volpara™ scanned over 1.2 million mammograms, enabling the early detection of around 1800 cancers. The products' success has catalysed significant improvements in cancer care, and generated an estimated £9M in sales over the past two years for the spinout companies established to develop them (Matakina, based in New Zealand, and Mirada Medical, based in the UK).
This Keele University research in multiscale object recognition has led to two key breakthroughs: (a) the automated identification of tissue boundaries in computer tomographic (CT) scans, enabling the latest radiotherapy equipment to more accurately target diseased tissue thus avoiding neighbouring healthy organs. Such improvements are essential to the successful roll-out of new more precise linear accelerators in the treatment of cancer; (b) new fractal algorithms to characterise the quality of transplanted cell growth from post-operative biopsies. By automating the selection of the healthiest cells this has assisted the generation of patient-specific cartilage and is essential for the development of a medical capability for large-scale patient-specific generation of cartilage growth for the treatment of arthritis. It has indirectly led to software improvements in cell-tracking and to achieving reliable auto-focussing in high throughput non-invasive microscopy.
A biomarker is a measurement or physical sign used as a substitute for a clinically meaningful endpoint that measures directly how a patient feels, functions, or survives. Biomarkers can be used to assess changes induced by a therapy or intervention on a clinically meaningful endpoint.
New quantitative image analysis techniques developed at Imperial College have enabled the computation of imaging biomarkers that are now widely used in clinical trials as well as for healthcare diagnostics. This case study illustrates the resulting key impacts including:
Functions of matrices underpin many of the fundamental algorithms used in the finance, engineering and pharmaceutical industries. Our research has provided the state of the art algorithms for computing the most common matrix functions. The algorithms have been implemented commercially in MATLAB (with almost 2 million users) and the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) Ltd Library; as well as in open source packages such as R and Eigen. Software companies have enjoyed direct impact through improved products and increased revenues, whilst the greater indirect impact is for the users of the software, leading to acceleration in the pace of science and engineering worldwide.
The development of the chemistry of Selectfluor® (F-TEDA-BF4) has resulted in this Manchester-discovered reagent becoming the world's most widely used commercial electrophilic fluorinating agent to introduce fluorine into a range of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Annual worldwide production is ca. 25 tonnes and sales estimated to be US$7.5m. Selectfluor is used in the synthesis of fluticasone, a fluorinated corticosteroid which is the active ingredient in GSK's Advair ($3.6bn sales in 2010) used in the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease symptoms; top 25 selling drugs Flixonase, Flixotide, Flonase, Flovent HFA and Advair Diskus which had total sales of over $17bn between 2009-2012.