The purpose of this project is collaborative development and application of advanced image processing and information processing algorithms for use in basic and clinical research. Examples of application areas include: MRI, CT, Ultrasound, PET, SPECT, confocal and electron microscopy, gel electrophoresis, and information content of macromolecular sequences. Drs. C-N Chen and Henry Eden have collaborated with Drs. M. Lewis, V. Chen, and K. Wang et al to develop techniques to study structural details of muscle fibers. Images were obtained by confocal microscopy of fluorescence-tagged tissues. IDL software was then used to reformat the data and convert it to a 3D stack. Lastly, 3DVIEWNIX software (Medical Image Processing Group, University of Pennsylvania) was used to segment the data and construct 3D animations of the fibers. In a parallel effort the group has also worked to develop data handling and deconvolution algorithms for use with experimentally-obtained point-spread functions. Dr. James Ellis has collaborated with Dr. Thomas Schneider, et al, to perform DNA splice site analysis. Special attention has been given initially to portions of DNA associated with the human neurofibromatosis 2 (NF2) gene and the human alpha-L-iduronidase gene. In general the results are consistent with experiment studies and explain several aspects of splice site changes and alternative splicing. Most of these results are not obtainable using the standard or conventional definitions of splice sites and splicing. The collaboration has also begun analyses of two other families of genetic material. - image processing, information analysis, MRI, SPECT, segmentation, 3D - Human Subjects
