From Imaging Voxels to Clinical Outcomes: Signal Processing and Machine Learning-Based Tools for Medical Imaging

Forum Details

Date: August 15, 2025 12-1PM Eastern time

Speakers: Sundaresh Ram, PhD

Signal processing and machine learning methods are increasingly integral to advancing imaging-based clinical decision-making, particularly in complex, heterogeneous diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and in time-sensitive applications such as organ transplantation. This talk explores how tools rooted in these domains—such as sparse representations, topological analysis, and graph-based modeling—can be leveraged to transform radiological data into actionable clinical insights.

Dr. Ram presents recent work done in his lab that applies these techniques across multiple imaging applications: characterizing spatial heterogeneity in lung tissue, modeling disease progression through trajectory analysis, and developing sparse, data-efficient algorithms to support donor lung evaluation. These approaches highlight how signal processing and machine learning can enhance interpretability, improve predictive modeling, and bridge quantitative imaging with meaningful clinical outcomes.