Mathematical modelling and computer simulation have proved tremendously successful in engineering. One of the greatest challenges for mechanists is to extend the success of computational mechanics to fields outside traditional engineering, in particular to biology, biomedical sciences, and medicine.

By extending the surgeon’s ability to plan and carry out surgical interventions more accurately and with less trauma, Computer-Integrated Surgery (CIS) systems could help to improve clinical outcomes and the efficiency of health care delivery. CIS systems could have a similar impact on surgery to that long since realized in Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM).

In this lecture, Karol Miller will demonstrate how computational mechanics can be used to improve patient outcomes in brain and vascular surgery.

He will showcase two successful applications:

• one about using computational models as an aid for neuronavigation in brain tumour removal procedure;
• another about abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) rupture risk prediction.

Karol Miller will conclude with suggestions for the future developments in the field and a vision for a new era of personalised medicine based on patient-specific scientific computations.

About the lecturer

Karol Miller studied Applied Mechanics and received a PhD in Robotics from Warsaw University of Technology in 1994, and a Doctorate of Science (Habilitation) in Biomechanics from the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2003. In 2002, he established the Intelligent Systems for Medicine Laboratory (ISML) at The University of Western Australia.

The ISML’s mission is to work towards improving clinical outcomes through appropriate use of technology. It runs research projects funded by the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), the National Institute of Health (USA) and other national and international agencies.

The overall objective of Karol Miller's research is to help creating methods and tools which will enable a new exciting era of personalised medicine. He is best known for his work on biomechanics of soft tissues. His current research interests include computational biomechanics for medicine and numerical methods, with applications to surgical simulation, image-guided surgery and, surprise, geomechanics.

Miller's research and teaching have been recognised by multiple awards, including the Humboldt Research Award, the NVIDIA GPU Computing Champion Award, the Simulation Industry Association Australia Award, the Sir Charles Julius Award, the Polish Prime Minister Award, the UWA Faculty of Engineering Computing and Mathematics Teaching Award and the UWA Student Guild Choice Award.

Karol Miller is currently a visiting professor, funded by the FNR INTER Programme, in the Computational Science research priority of the University of Luxembourg.

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This Jeudis des Sciences lecture will be taking place at 17:30 on Thursday, 7 May 2015 on Kirchberg Campus, 6 rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, L-1359 Luxembourg.

Photo: © Stéphane Bordas