The scientific objective of the programme is to design, develop, and validate new imaging technologies to improve the performance and safety of therapeutic and interventional procedures. Improving therapy and surgery planning will be approached using multimodal imaging strategies, lesion and dysfunctional tissue characterization, efficient segmentation and image fusion techniques. Image guided therapy and intervention improvements will be pursued by designing the integration of new imaging modalities in the surgical workflow, providing new techniques to compensate for undesired motions as well as innovative methods and instruments to integrate new intraoperative imaging devices. Follow-up and therapy outcome is a major concern and will be approached using innovative methodologies to quantitatively assess and predict recovery and prognosis after therapy or surgery. Furthermore, concrete scenarios will be considered within the frameworks of interventional cardiac therapy and surgery and soft tissue organs therapy. New workflows will be proposed incorporating the new technologies in these concrete scenarios.

This project is a multidisciplinary initiative allowing the exchange of scientists among four research institutes with international recognition in medical imaging and biomedical engineering.