The Research interests of Ewert Bengtsson

My main research interest is in developing computerized image analysis for medical applications. I have been working in that field since my Master Thesis work in 1973-74. That work was dealing with Analysis of cell images using video and computer technology. My doctoral thesis in 1977 was dealing with the same subject. I have since then supervised about a dozen doctoral theses in that field. Most of the previous work has been related to cancer research but now we are also turning into modern cell biology problems. Digital imaging cytometry is a field of rapidly growing importance. Currently we have close cooperation with the research group of professor Ulf Landegren at the Rudbecks Lab of Uppsala University and several other partners through the EU-funded ENLIGHT project.

 

A trend in modern microscopy is that more and more images are becoming 3D, thus representing our three dimensional world in a more accurate way. We see many interesting and challenging problems in developing effective image analysis algorithms for such images. A concrete example is a comparative study of the structure of muscle fibres for animals of different species.    

But cell image analysis is not my only interest. I also work with other medical images e.g. from radiology (CT, MR) or nuclear medicine (PET, SPECT). One of our main early results in that field was the development of a computerized brain atlas. Currently we have an exciting project on using haptic interaction to supplement the visual one in exploring medical images. We have collaboration with the University hospital in Uppsala on whole body angiographic and liver images and with the University of Queensland, Australia, on MR angiographic images of breasts.

Our research at CBA also covers many other things. The other senior research leader in image analysis at the centre is Gunilla Borgefors, she is professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She is well established in the field of digital geometry where she has made several fundamental contributions. Those methods are used in many of our applied projects both by her students and mine. There are by the way no clear cut borders between projects involving her and my students, in several cases we have projects and students moving between the two universities that stand behind our centre. One such project, involving people from both universities is the study of the 3D structure of protein molecules in electron microscopy tomographic images.  

We have also for many years had research in remote sensing where we in particular have been interested in developing hyperspectral image analysis techniques, and techniques that mix classical remote sensing methods with image analysis methods. In general we finds it fruitful to be active in rather diverse application fields and try to see when methods that have become established in one field can be adapted to be useful also in a completely different field. Our future involvement in remote sensing is currently being discussed.

Finally I am also responsible for computer graphics and visualisation at Uppsala University. Professor Stefan Seipel and associate professor Ingela Nyström are my senior colleagues in that field. Personally I have been involved in the development of more efficient algorithms for graphical rendering.

For a much more complete account of our research I refer to the other web-pages at www.cb.uu.se e.g. the personal web-pages of my colleagues and students and in particular to our annual report which lists all our current projects, publications, collaboration partners and other recent activities.