Post-Graduate Education within Imaging Science
Imaging Science is a world-class research group, focusing on gathering and interpreting images and signals.
We are a multi-disciplinary group, including clinical radiologists, MR imaging physicists and computer vision experts. We have an international reputation for the quality of our research.
Our activities are relevant to healthcare, bioscience and a broad range of industry and commerce. We have a focused programme of basic, strategic and applied research in imaging, computer vision, image analysis, pattern recognition, physiological measurement and health informatics.
We collaborate widely, both through the University’s Institutes of Neuroscience and Cancer Studies, and with external partners in academia and industry.
We have particular interest in the following research domains:
- Quantitative medical image analysis and signal-based biomarkers
- Facial image interpretation
- Statistical models of shape and appearance
- Statistically based algorithm development and evaluation
- Imaging neuroscience
- Imaging in musculo-skeletal disorders
- Imaging in cancer
- Imaging in Vascular Disease
- MR spectroscopy
- Novel MR methods including dynamic contrast MRI and diffusion tensor MRI
The group currently contains about 15 academic staff, 30 Post-Docs and 25 PhD students, as well as a strong team of support staff.
Quality of Research
As a group we are proud of the quality and influence of our research. In the UK Research Assessment Exercise we scored a 5* for our computer vision activities and an excellent 5 in all our other activities.
We regularly publish in the leading international conferences and journals in our fields, and have won numerous prizes for our work over the years, including for the Best Paper at the European Conference on Computer Vision (1998 and 2002), the Best Paper at the International Conference on Face and Gesture Recognition (1998) and Science/Industrial prizes at the British Machine Vision Conference (1992,1995,2001,2003,2006). A recent PhD student won the BCS Best Thesis prize. Our work on statistical shape and appearance models has been very influential. The papers describing the ‘Active Shape Model’ and the ‘Active Appearance Model’ are some of the most widely cited in the field. Professors Cootes and Taylor are both within the top 0.1% of Computer Scientists by number of citations (Citeseer lists).
We collaborate widely, working closely with clinicians, and with industry. The group has an excellent record for getting its research used to sole real problems in industry and medicine. Academics within the group have been involved in four spin-out companies, and have considerable experience of the challenges involved in turning research results into useable products in a range of areas, including industrial inspection, facial interpretation and medical image interpretation.
Research Environment
Imaging Science is a stimulating place to work. We encourage collaboration between students and research staff through regular meetings and discussion groups. We have a dedicated IT support team, running our own network of desktop workstations and computer clusters.
Our PhD programme typically involves
- weekly meetings with supervisors,
- regular formal meetings (at 1, 3, 9, 12, 24 and 30 months) to evaluate progress and ensure students are being properly supported
- a taught component including relevant course material for the project, research skills and writing skills
- giving a talk at an annual PhD student presentation meeting
As well as becoming familiar with their chosen field, students will gain experience of working in a team, and are encouraged to submit scientific papers to key conferences and journals. The group currently has about 30 PhD students working predominantly with medical images or on Computer Vision projects.
Applying for PostGrad positions
See PhD application details.
Tim's Home Page