Internship – Numerical modelling for stenosis characterisation

Contract type :
Internship

Level of qualifications required :
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Other valued qualifications :
Master of engineering

Fonction :
Internship Research

Context

The project is an ongoing collaboration between Leiden University Medical Center (Leiden, Netherlands) and Inria team Simbiotx. It is part of the ERC European project MoDeLLiver (grant agreement id 864313). The intership will be co-supervised by Irene Vignon-Clémentel (Directrice de recherche) and Jérôme Kowalski (PhD student).

Assignment

Context:

A crucial aspect in the surgical decision process is organ perfusion and functional assessment. In this context, a very active medical imaging field is dynamic functional imaging. Functional imaging often involves a tracer, which is transported in the blood circulation, with a certain time-dynamics as it goes through the different components of the circulatory system. Signals are often interpreted by ‘time-to-peak’ or ‘area-under-the-curve’ measurements that are non-specific markers of the underlying perfusion and function. This is inhibiting a wider clinical use of such modality. This internship project aims at better understanding these dynamical signals in the context of bad perfusion assessment in the case of a stenosis (abnormal narrowing a blood vessel) using mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of blood flow and transport.

Objectives:

• Create a dataset of organ vasculature baseline and diseased
• Understand the impact of different pathologies on the vasculature morphometry
• Understand the influence of the severity of a stenosis and its location on the measured perfusion patterns
• Understand adjustment of the blood flow to a surgery.

For a better knowledge of the proposed research subject :
[1] Vignon-Clementel et.al., A proof-of-concept pipeline to guide evaluation of tumor tissue perfusion by dynamic contrast-agent imaging: direct simulation and inverse tracer-kinetic procedures. Front. Bioinform. Sec. Computational BioImaging  (soon printed)

[2] Audebert et.al., Kinetic scheme for arterial and venous blood flow, and application to partial hepatectomy modeling. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. 2017

[3] Sourbron, S.P. and Buckley, D.L. (2013), Classic models for dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI. NMR Biomed., 26: 1004-1027. https://doi.org/10.1002/nbm.2940

[4] Project MoDeLLiver. NUMERICAL MODELLING OF HEMODYNAMICS AND PHARMACOKINETICS FOR CLINICAL TRANSLATION vacanciesin.eu MoDeLLiver Project vacanciesin.eu Fact Sheet vacanciesin.eu H2020 vacanciesin.eu CORDIS vacanciesin.eu European Commission. url: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/864313

Main activities

Main activities:

• Scan the literature for vasculature data of the main organs.
• Model different organs with different pathologies
• Model the behaviour of a stenosis in main arteries
• Simulate transport through a badly perfused organ based on patient data
• Compare the results with imaging data before and after surgery

Skills

Technical skills and level required : Python (advanced). Differential equations, numerical methods, C++. Git is a plus.

Languages : English (fluent)

Benefits package

• Subsidized meals
• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking (after 6 months of employment) and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage