Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Abbas Samani, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Associate Professor
asamani@uwo.ca 519-661-2111 x82723 MSB 402
Abbas Samani, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Associate Professor
asamani@uwo.ca 519-661-2111 x82723 MSB 402
Dr. Abbas Samani received his B.Sc degree from Amirkabir University of Technology and M.Sc. degree from Tehran University in 1987 and 1991 respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo in 1997. Dr. Samani held post-doctoral fellowship and reserach associate positions at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto until 2003. In 2003, he joined the University of Western Ontario as an Assistant Professor where he holds a joint faculty position in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Medical Biophysics at the University of Western Ontario. He is also a core faculty member of the newly established Western’s Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, and is an Associate Scientist of the Imaging Research Laboratories at Robarts Research Institute. His research interests are biological tissue modeling and its applications in medical imaging and intervention, and image analysis.
Biological Tissue Modeling in Biomedical Applications:
Modeling biological tissues and its applications in medical imaging and medical image processing, non-invasive or minimally invasive medical diagnosis and intervention of breast, prostate and brain cancer and heart diseases. These areas involve numerical solution of Biomechanics P.D.E’s (meshing techniques and Finite Elements Analysis), inverse problems and medical imaging and medical image processing. Follows are more detailed research areas:
· Medical Image Co-registration and Image Updating for Breast Surgery: Finite Element based Non-rigid image registration and image updating for breast registration and surgery, and carotid artery registration.
· Elastography: Imaging techniques capable of imaging tissue stiffness. These techniques use either conventional imaging such as MRI or Ultrasound to measure displacements resulting from tissue excitation required for tissue elasticity reconstruction. Another approach that I have used in my research lab in the past few years is using image similarity measures such as Mutual Information to simultaneously do image registration as well as elastic modulus reconstruction. This research has been aimed at diagnosis of breast, prostate and brain cancer and prostate biopsy guidance. One of the ongoing research projects in my lab is aimed at developing Elastography technique for Transrectal Ultrasound (TRUS) prostate biopsy guiedance.
· Biomechanical Modeling of Biological Soft Tissue: Modeling biological soft tissues. This includes Finite Element models to predict tissue deformation and experimental methods in conjunction with numerical optimization techniques to measure elastic and hyperelastic properties of soft tissues.
· Biomechanics Based Imaging Technique for Myocardial Tissue Viability assessment: Non-invasive medical imaging technique to assess the extent of myocardial tissue damage as a result of infarction. In addition to detecting infracted areas, this technique can result in measuring the ventricular blood pressure, and as such will be helpful to diagnose pulmonary hypertension disease.
· Electrical Impedance Tomography: Electrical impedance tomography technique for breast cancer assessment. Using Finite Element Method I have developed inversion techniques to reconstruct the electrical impedance of breast tissues. This research has a good potential to be perfected and applied as a noninvasive technique for breast cancer diagnosis.