24 DAILY WACV Congrats, Doctor Iris! Saturday Iris Vos defended her PhD on January 28th at Utrecht University. During her time at the Image Sciences Institute (UMC Utrecht), she worked on developing advanced computational methods to study brain blood vessels on a large scale. Under the supervision of Ynte Ruigrok, Birgitta Velthuis, Hugo Kuijf, and Jelmer Wolterink, her research focused on using artificial intelligence and image analysis to predict the development of intracranial aneurysms. After completing her PhD, she moved into industry and now works as a Data Scientist at Datacation. Congrats, Doctor, Iris! A brain aneurysm – also known as an intracranial aneurysm – is a weak spot in the wall of a brain blood vessel that starts to bulge out. Think of it like an inflating balloon. While most aneurysms do not cause problems and remain undiagnosed, some can grow over time, increasing the risk of rupture and leading to life-threatening bleeding. The problem is that that we don’t yet have a reliable way to predict who is most at risk. As a result, current screening protocols are only moderately effective. If we could identify specific features in images that indicate higher risk, we could make screening more efficient. High-risk individuals could be monitored closely, while the screening for those at low risk could be reduced or even stopped. Identifying these features, or imaging markers, requires analyzing large datasets of patient images. However, brain blood vessels have highly complex structures with significant anatomical variability: some vessels may be fused, underdeveloped, duplicated, or even missing entirely. Their sizes can also range widely, from less than 0.5 mm to over 3 mm in diameter. Some of these variations can influence blood flow dynamics and potentially contribute to aneurysm development. Evaluating blood vessels manually by radiologists is time-consuming and subjective, which is why we need (semi-)automated methods that can handle the complex anatomy and structural variability of blood vessels.
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