Team

Roberto Souza - Assistant Professor, University of Calgary

Main investigator, dataset conceiver and manager

Dr. Souza is a dual citizen from Brazil and the United States, working as an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Calgary, Canada, since July 2020. He has a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Pará (2012), an M.Sc. (2014) and Ph.D. (2017) both in computer engineering from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Before becoming an Assistant Professor, he worked for three years as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Calgary. He has international experience, having worked as an intern at the Grenoble Institute of Technology, France, and the University of Pennsylvania, United States. Dr. Souza has extensive expertise in image processing and machine learning. His research is currently focused on smart strategies for data integration and data mining in the medical field. Look at his Google Scholar page for a list of relevant publications.

Letícia Rittner - Tenured Professor, UNICAMP

Main investigator and dataset conceiver

Dr. Rittner is a Professor at Department of Computer Engineering and Industrial Automation (DCA), School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FEEC), University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Her research group is part of the Medical Image Computing Lab. She has a B.Eng. (Electrical Engineering, 1993) from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). After 7 years in the industry and an MBA at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), she returned to UNICAMP, where she completed both a MSc (2004) and a PhD (2009), with a 6-month internship at the McConnell Brain Imaging Center (BIC), Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Canada. Her thesis research focused on segmentation methods for diffusion tensor imaging. She spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical Imaging Processing Group (MIPG), Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania (2012-2013). Some of Dr Rittner's recent papers are on automatic Corpus Callosum parcellation and characterization in DTI and on brain white matter lesions detection and classification.

Richard Frayne - Deputy Director Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary

Main investigator and dataset conceiver

Dr Richard Frayne, is a Professor (with tenure) in the Departments of Radiology and Clinical Neuroscience, a member of the Seaman Family MR Centre (SFC) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary. He is also the Deputy Director of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), Foothills Medical Centre, Alberta Health Services. Previously he was Scientific Director of the SFC. From 2003-2013, he was a Canada Research Chair in Image Sciences and, in 2010, he was appointed to the Hopewell Professorship in Brain Imaging. Dr Frayne has >20 years of experience in imaging research in a clinical research environment and has >160 published peer-reviewed publications, >115 invited talks and >500 scholarly presentations. In addition, he has 20 international patents and has had technology successfully licensed (estimated commercial value >$100M). His research interests are in the development and application of new human imaging techniques for the study, detection and treatment of neurovascular disease. Current specific interests include angiography, stroke and small vessel disease, and applications of these and other imaging techniques to human clinical trials. The impact of his research can be measured not only through traditional measures of scholarly output (>7,900 citations, 15 papers have >100 citations; Google Scholar) but by impact on patient care. His expertise in clinical translation of imaging techniques is well recognized, including Calgary-based work in moving magnetic resonance (MR) imaging from 1.5 T to 3 T.

Roberto Lotufo - Professor, UNICAMP

Main investigator and dataset conceiver

Dr. Lotufo received his B.Sc. degree from Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Brazil, in 1978 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K., in 1990. Since 1981, he has been with the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil, where he is currently a Full Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His principal research interests are in the areas of image processing and analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning. Prof. Lotufo has authored or coauthored over 150 refereed international journal and full conference papers. Prof. Lotufo was a recipient of the Innovation Personality in 2008 and the Zeferino Vaz Academic Recognition in 2011 from the University of Campinas. He is a founder partner and Chief Technology Officer of the Neural Mind start-up company focused on developing solutions using Deep Learning (NeuralMind).

Mariana Bento - Assistant Professor, University of Calgary

Main Investigator - quality control and data variability

Dr. Bento currently is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Calgary Image Processing and Analysis Centre, University of Calgary (CIPAC). She held the Donald Burns and Louise Berlin Postdoctoral Fellowship in Dementia Research from the Hotchkiss Brain Institute between 2017-19. In 2020, she was awarded the Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform award. She did her MSc and PhD at UNICAMP. She is an expert in texture analysis using both handcrafted and convolutional features. During her PhD she developed an automatic tool for segmenting white-matter lesions. She is interested in brain abnormalities, heterogeneous datasets, MR imaging quality assessment, and interpretability of deep learning approaches on medical imaging applications.

Oeslle Lucena - M.Sc., King's College London

Investigator - brain segmentation tools

Mr. Lucena is currently a Ph.D. Student at King's College London. He holds an EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) studentship for a full-time Ph.D. in Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering. He is an expert in deep learning for medical imaging. During his M.S.c, he developed deep-learning-based approaches for skull-stripping and tractography. He has international experience having worked as an intern at University College London, London, UK and as an exchange student at Western University, ON, Canada. Mr. Lucena has extensive expertise in image processing, computer vision, and machine learning.