On February 5 2021 at 16.00 Alexander Soñora Mengana will defend his PhD entitled “COMPUTER AIDED DETECTION OF LUNG NODULES FROM CT IMAGING”.

Lung cancer is the first cause of cancer related death worldwide Early detection can have substantial impact on treatment outcome Computer aided detection (systems can play an important role in improving the detection rate and reducing the clinical workload, in particular considering the lung cancer screening protocols that are currently being set up.
Starting from an existing system for computer aided detection of lung cancer, several aspects of the processing pipeline were investigated, with the aim to improve the accuracy and robustness of the process The system employed a two stage approach, comprising of a candidate detector, and a false positive reduction step based on hand crafted features Initially the design of the system was changed to a modular architecture to facilitate introducing alterations at different stages, and evaluate their impact The system’s efficiency and usability was improved and individual components were tuned.
Next, a thorough characterisation of its performance by participating to the LUNA 16 Challenge The participation implied training and testing the system on large clinical dataset It also enabled the objective comparison to other proposed CAD approaches using a common evaluation methodology The system as a whole, was shown to perform well, achieving comparable results to other full system submissions at the time of the challenge Closer analysis, revealed this was mainly due to a sensitive nodule candidate detector, whereas other approaches were found to have better false positive reduction.
Subsequently, several aspects of the pipeline were investigated, to improve on this baseline results An improved lung segmentation procedure was added to the preprocessing stage The method reduces the amount of failed lung segmentations due to artefacts or even tracheotomy by performing an error detection and correction procedure, making the candidate detection process more robust.
Candidate detectors often mark a large number of non nodule structures compared to the of actual nodules This imbalance in the data during training, may hinder the performance of the classifier Data balancing methods, comprising both undersampling and oversampling approaches in feature space, were therefore investigated in detail Surprisingly, undersampling the majority class, as performed in the original system, was found to perform worse compared to no balancing Balancing by oversampling the minority class allowed to improve the result further
Over the course of my PhD, deep learning methods emerged for medical image analysis, and rapidly outperformed alternative approaches in the CAD domain I therefore investigated how to increase the accuracy of the false positive reduction by training a convolutional neural network using the candidates provided by my detector, and obtained a substantial increase in accuracy
Interestingly, combining the learnt features with the hand crafted features, improved the results even further

– Non-EEA citizens: before the 1st of April. (for the next academic year).

– EEA-citizens: before the 1st of September (for the next academic year).

ETRO gave a presentation on 16 June about the TRM radar technology “to look into the walls”  on the FLANDERS INTERNATIONAL DAY of SMART HUB VLAAMS-BRABANT to the international representatives of the Flanders Trade and Invest (FIT) aka the key point of contact for international business in Flanders, but also for export of Flemish business to abroad.

https://corporate.flandersinvestmentandtrade.com/en

Brussels, March 8, 2025 – On International Women’s Day, a day dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements and advocating for greater gender equality, the new WATS ambassador is announced: Lesley De Cruz. This inspiring professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and researcher at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) is committed to encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). 

The WATS Award: Increasing Visibility for Women in STEM 

Since 2018, the Brussels-Capital Region and Innoviris have been presenting the biennial Women Award in Technology and Science (WATS). This award highlights Brussels-based women who not only excel in STEM but also inspire others to follow in their footsteps. The prize is awarded based on their potential as role models and their concrete plans to encourage girls and women to consider STEM studies or careers. 

Why Lesley De Cruz? 

Lesley De Cruz was selected by a jury of former laureates and young female STEM enthusiasts (aged 16-17) for her versatility as a scientist and her approachability as a role model. She also excels in her ability to communicate complex scientific topics in an accessible and engaging way. 

Her award-winning project introduces young people to artificial intelligence by guiding them to build a virtual city and examine its climate impact. This innovative approach makes scientific knowledge both relevant and tangible while addressing societal issues such as climate change. 

Making STEM Accessible for Everyone 

Lesley’s mission as a WATS ambassador is clear: “I want to show girls that STEM empowers you to make a positive impact on the world,” she says. “My message is especially aimed at girls who think, ‘Amazing, but that’s not for me.’ I want to inspire them to believe in themselves and show that anyone, regardless of background, can have a future in STEM.” 

With the accompanying €10,000 prize, Lesley plans to organize various activities in Brussels to actively guide and motivate girls. 

International Women’s Day: Celebrating Female Role Models 

On this International Women’s Day, we celebrate not only the achievements of women worldwide but also the role models who make a difference. Thanks to Lesley De Cruz and her efforts, we are building a future where STEM is a place for everyone, regardless of gender. 

The language of the programme is English, and the requirements are described here: http://www.vub.ac.be/en/study/applied-sciences-and-engineering-applied-computer-science#admission-criteria;

– If cannot provide a proof of sufficient knowledge of English, then, after the positive evaluation of your academic background and all other criteria to follow the program are met, through an interview the professors will also assess your level of English and a final decision will be taken.

– In order to select the ENGLISH programme In the CHOICE OF PROGRAMME in the online application: Please make sure that you select the programme with code 00243.

Zamzam won the award for the third place in the Best Student Paper category at the World Congress on Medical Informatics in Sydney for the paper “Baseline Survey on Referrals and Healthcare Provider Needs in View for an Electronic Referral System” authored by Zamzam Kalume, Bart Jansen, Marc Nyssen, Jan Cornelis and Frank Verbeke .