Activity Updates from the BioImaging and Signal Processing (BISP) Technical Committee

Contributed by Christopher Wyatt (TC Liaison to eNews)

The Bio Imaging and Signal Processing (BISP) Technical Committee (TC) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (IEEE-SPS) promotes activities within the broad technical areas of biomedical and biological signal and image processing. Specific fields of interest include (but are not limited to): molecular and medical imaging, microscopy, signal processing in computational biology and biological networks, signal processing of physiological signals, and bioinformatics.

The BISP TC coordinates the review for biomedicine related tracks of the annual SPS flagship conference -- International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP).  The next ICASSP, ICASSP2011, will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, on May 22-27, 2011. The BISP TC is cosponsoring (with the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society) the annual International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI).  This year, ISBI 2010 was successfully held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in April 2010. The meeting featured four outstanding plenary talks and several special sessions on topics of great current interest. ISBI 2011 will be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA, 20-23 April 2011 and will continue the tradition of fostering cross-fertilization among different imaging communities and contributing to an integrative approach to biomedical imaging across all scales of observation.

In early 2010, the BISP TC created a new BISP member category, Honorary Associated Member, to recognize, at the end of their term, Members who have been particularly active and meritorious to the BISP TC.  Dana Brooks, Michael Unser and Josiane Zerubia were elected as Honorary Associated Members.

BISP TC members serve as guest editors of the July 2010 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, a special issue devoted to exciting advances in the field of medical imaging (with the guest editors: Miles Wernick, Charles Bouman, Richard Leahy and James Duncan.).  Contributed articles will highlight the central and diverse roles that signal and image processing play in this important area.  The magazine will feature articles about how signal processing is used to map the function of the human brain and to help create the imagery that modern medicine uses to diagnose disease.   Uses of imaging to guide robotic-assisted surgery will be explored, as well as exciting applications of machine learning used to understand medical images and create image-based search engines.