About Biomedical Imaging

Imaging technologies are core disciplines of today’s and tomorrow’s biology and medicine. In biomedical research, innovative imaging techniques zoom in on anatomy and function from the organ to the cellular/molecular level, thus providing unique insight into living systems, from biological model systems to patients. In clinical practice, medical imaging plays a prominent role in screening, diagnosis and staging of disease, therapy planning and monitoring, and guidance of interventions. The number of patient studies, the amount of data per patient, and the heterogeneity of the data have increased tremendously, a trend which is expected to continue.
In view of the prominent role of medical imaging in clinical practice, and the rapid developments in biomedical imaging technology, biomedical image processing has become a very active and exciting area of research. There is an urgent need for computational tools aiding the interpretation of the vast amount of data generated.

Image processing provides
•    Intuitive visualization of imaging data
•    fusion and integrated analysis of imaging data from multiple imaging modalities
•    Segmentation and quantitative analysis of biomedical imaging data
•    Image guided (minimally invasive) interventions
•    Analysis of follow up scans of patients
•    Anatomical and functional research
Even stronger, computational techniques are a prerequisite to fully exploit the richness of the biomedical imaging data that is acquired in biomedical research and clinical practice.

Recent technical advances opened up the gates for a wide range of  medical image processing methods. Moore’s law on the capabilities of digital electronic devices predicts doubling of hardware speed and capacities approximately every second year, highly encouraging research on new algorithms, and improvement of existing methods with respect to performance, reliability, and speed.

Lifecycle of a medical image processing method

The general goal of image processing is providing a cheap, high quality, and for everyone accessible health care by reducing data evaluation time, and supplying physicians with reproducible measurements. A final health care product is generated in three levels: 1) researchers prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm; 2) the method matures and becomes part of a commercial application, which can be purchased by health care institutions; 3) it is being used in clinical practice.
The goal in medical imaging can solely be achieved in case of close collaboration of research, industry, and clinics. Good cooperation between software companies and research institutes is necessary for producing ergonomic, useful, and reliable products for health industry.
Also, we stress the importance of within-level cooperation of research centers. Cooperation within groups provides the benefit of a wide knowledge base and sharing of available resources, leading to cutting edge research.
The NFBI grew out from the above standing ideas for the region of Netherlands. The aim of NFBI is to give a frame for cooperation, meetings, and discussions of all levels and groups in the medical imaging field.

The Netherlands in the medical imaging society
Netherlands is one of the leading development centers for medical image processing in the world. Yearly hundreds of conference and journal papers get published, and track attention.
To keep this position despite the high costs of medical equipment, and human resources, this forum came to life to encourage cooperation of research institutions, and companies.