Medical Ultrasound Imaging Center

The Medical UltraSound Imaging Center, MUSIC, is an international expertise center on functional imaging using ultrasound for medical applications. MUSIC develops ultrasound based techniques for improved diagnosis, guiding intervention and monitoring treatment from idea to initial clinical application. The close collaboration with clinicians on one side and commercial partners on the other side warrants that these techniques not only result in academic output, but also are translated to clinical applications and when appropriate to commercial products.

The research focus is on development functional ultrasound imaging techniques and on quantitative analysis of echo images for cardiovascular, radiology, and OB/GYN applications. Furthermore, at MUSIC we have developed tools for quality assurance of ultrasound equipment : QA4US.

MUSIC is part of the Department of Medical Imaging and Nuclear Medicine and embedded in the research theme “Vascular Damage” of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen.

News

December 1, 2021: Thomas van den Heuvel received the NWO Stairway to Impact Award from Dutch Research Council NWO. He receives this prize for the development of the BabyChecker, a smartphone application that allows midwives to make ultrasounds during pregnancies, with the aim of reducing maternal mortality in recourse limited countries.
August 1, 2021: Demo’s in NEMO: during the summer holidays, members of MUSIC will provide demonstrations on ultrasound imaging in “Superzicht” for the special exhibition “ See it you Way”. MUSIC members will perform on July 10, 11, 31 and August 1, 21 and 22.
June 18, 2021: Currently we have a great opportunity for a researcher with experience in Ultrasound and Artificial Intelligence: Tenure track AI-assisted Ultrasound Imaging . We are looking for a candidate with 2-4 years post-PhD experience and proven track record by high-quality publications and preferably grant writing experience. The position is also partly embedded in the Diagnostic Image Analysis Group (DIAG).
November 17, 2020: November 17, 2020: At the annual NWO-AES Tecknowlogy Symposium, the latest movie on the BabyChecker project was presented. It shows our latest developments which include the app for android phones for guiding the acquisition, fully automated analysis of the data and presentation of the final results. More info about this research
October 29, 2020: Research project “Personalized risk assessment of carotid artery stenosis by ultrafast ultrasound flow imaging” granted in the promotion fund of the Radboudumc and regional hospitals. This fund aims to stimulate collaborations between regional hospitals. Anne Saris en Chris de Korte (Radboudumc) will collaborate with Michel Reijnen and Suzanne Holewijn (Rijnstate), aiming to assess the association between blood flow and atherosclerosis progression and risk using non-invasive ultrasound blood flow imaging.
October 4, 2020: At the International Workshop on Advances in Simplifying Medical Ultrasound of the 2020 MICCAI conference, Thomas van den Heuvel and Chris de Korte won the Best Demonstration Award for their demonstration of the BabyChecker.
June 12, 2020: June 12, During the Euroson 2020 webinar, Thomas van den Heuvel won the Young Investigator Award from the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology with his abstract entitled: “Introducing prenatal ultrasound screening in research-limited settings using artificial intelligence”.
November 21, 2019: Gert_Weijers has succesfully defended his PhD thesis with the title ' Staging liver fat by quantitative ultrasound'.
October 29, 2019: Gijs Hendriks has succesfully defended his PhD thesis with the title ' 3D breast ultrasound elastography'. He developed and validated 3D ultrasound elastography to improve breast cancer detection. His work was covered by Dutch national media: RTL Nieuws and local media: Omroep Venlo" .
August 20, 2019: Anne Saris has succesfully defended her PhD thesis with the title ' Blood velocity vector imaging in the carotid artery using ultrasound'.
July 3, 2019: Thomas van den Heuvel, Bram van Ginneken and Chris de Korte have been awarded an NWO Demonstrator grant. This grant will be used to make a demonstrator model out of the PhD research: Automated low-cost ultrasound: improving antenatal care in resource-limited settings’.
July 2, 2019: Stein Fekkes has succesfully defended his PhD thesistitled' 3D Carotid Elastography'.
January 18, 2019: Roel Verhoeven won the 'Best clinical poster award' at the Imaging the Biomechanics of Life (TOPIM) conference in Les Houches, France as hosted by the European Society for Molecular Imaging. Apart from a great sweater as a rememberance to this award, he more importantly got the opportunity to again present his work as an oral presentation for the main audience!
January 9, 2019: Thomas van den Heuvel defended his thesis on Automated low-cost ultrasound: improving antenatal care in resource-limited settings. He showed that a deep learning system can perform real-time detection of risk factors for pregnant women using the input from a low-cost ultrasound device. His work was covered by NOS op 3, national radio, Algemeen Dagblad, Medisch Contact, and RTL Z. Next month, Thomas will return to Ethiopia for further testing of his device.
December 20, 2018: Kaj Gijsbertse has succesfully defended his PhD thesis entitled: Functional ultrasound imaging of the lower extremity
November 8, 2018: The consortium led by Chris de Korte was awarded an NWO Perspectief grant for ultra-X-treme: ultrafast ultrasound imaging for extended diagnosis and treatment of vascular disease. Five academic partners (Radboudumc, ErasmusMC, University of Twente, University of Technology Delft, and Eindhoven University of Technology) together with 8 industrial partners (Philips, Tomtec, Vermon, Mindray, Bracco, Ansys, Pie Medical Imaging and Verasonics) and two hospitals (Catherina ziekenhuis Eindhoven, Rijnstate) will join forces to make vascular interventions really patient specific.
December 1, 2017: During the annual meeting of the Dutch Physiology Association, Dr. Martijn Maessen received the prestigious Hamburger Award for best Thesis 2017. To read his thesis entitled “Cardiovascular benefits of lifelong exercise” click this link. Martijn was the first PhD student co-promoted by Dr. Rik Hansen from MUSIC (Dr. H.H.G. Hansen). The other members of the promotion team were prof. M.T.E. Hopman (promotor), prof. D.H.J. Thijssen (promotor) and Dr. T.M.H. Eijsvogels (co-promotor).
November 27, 2017: On November 10 and 11, Leon de Jong and Anton Nikolaev performed research on the InScience festival on behalf of the MURAB project. Visitors of the festival were able to actively participate in research in the Mariënburg chapel, which was part of the festivals DIY labs. The aim is to develop and validate new methods for 3D ultrasound acquisitions. Later on, this will enable accurate image fusion of MRI and US datasets, which is required in the MURAB project. The MURAB project focusses on improving accuracy and efficiency in the diagnostic workup of breast cancer and muscle disease patients. The cooperating students; Vera Poort, Harm Weekenstroo, Pim van Lochem and Anne ten Dam are hereby thanked for their help at the festival. The setup was well visited and a total number of 22 volunteers were scanned. For researchers as well as festival visitors, this event was very informative and fun and is definitely worth repeating.
November 24, 2017: Thomas van den Heuvel wins the prize for the ‘Best Oral Presentation’ of the Radboud Institute for Health Sciences PhD retreat 2017 for his presentation entitled: ‘Automated detection of maternal risk factors in developing countries’.
November 9, 2017: ing. Gert Weijers has received an NWO Open Mind grant for his research proposal together with Freke Wilmink (a Gynaecologist at Radboudumc) entitled: What do the lungs of unborn children sound like? at NWO’s innovation festival TEKNOWLOGY, 9 November 2017.
September 24, 2017: Dr. Rik Hansen was awarded the ‘best published paper’-award by the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology for the Stroke publication entitled ‘Validation of noninvasive in vivo compound ultrasound strain imaging using histologic plaque vulnerability features’. September 24, 2017: At the 29th Euroson congress, 2017 Ljubljana (Slovenia).
June 21, 2017: Dr. Rik Hansen wins the prize for the best paper published in 2016 at the Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, for his paper in Stroke
March 13, 2017: Prof. Chris de Korte is awarded an NWO-TTW grant on “Functional Imaging of the pelvic floor using ultrasound”. The project is a collaboration with prof. Huub van der Vaart (UMC Utrecht), Prof. Cees Slump (University of Twente), Philips Ultrasound, and TomTec
January 27, 2017: Anne Saris wins the 3rd best oral presentation award at the biomedical Engineering Conference 2017 in Egmond aan Zee
January 19, 2017: MUSIC hosts for the first time the “International Course on Ultrasound Imaging and Quality Assurance” in Nijmegen, The Netherlands
November 1, 2016: Dr. Rik Hansen publishes the inpatient results of compound strain imaging in the carotid artery in Stroke and in JACC Cardiovascular Imaging. Furthermore, the main result decorate the cover of the latter journal.
September 26, 2016: On the 23rd and 24th of September, the annual scientific meeting of the European Society of Breast Imaging (EUSOBI) took place in Paris. Gijs Hendriks received the Certificate of Merit . 40 Scientific abstracts were accepted for poster presentation. The authors of the 6 highest rated abstracts competed for the award, and presented their poster to the jury. Among the six selected abstracts two where from our department. Gijs Hendriks presented “Implementing 3-D ultrasound elastography in an automated breast volume scanner to improve specificity for breast cancer detection”, and received a certificate of merit for his excellent presentation.
July 4, 2016: On June 24, the symposium “Echography: New Recipe, now even better!” was organized by MUSIC to celebrate the inaugural lecture of Prof. Chris de Korte. At the Symposium the latest developments in Ultrasound imaging were presented by an international faculty. At the exhibition, the delegates had the opportunity to see these technologies implemented in commercial echosystems.
July 4, 2016: Chris L. de Korte gave his inaugural lecture on June 25, 2016 for an audience of 350 people. The title of the lecture was “Echo, the sound of the future” and in this lecture he discussed how we can do more with echo, how we can make it faster, how we can use higher frequencies and that we can do this all while also making it cheaper.
June 1, 2016: June 1, 2016: Chris L. de Korte has been appointed full professor “Medical Ultrasound Imaging” at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. During one day a week he will work on the translation of basic ultrasound techniques to clinical application. This chair is based at the Physics of Fluids Group and will work in close collaboration with Prof. dr. Michel Versluis.
April 1, 2016: Chuan Cheng started as PhD-student on the project "Ultra-fast 3D elastograpy"
April 1, 2016: The Ultrasound Biomicroscanning Meeting 2016 (UBM2016) will be organized by Chris L. de Korte at Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean.
October 1, 2015: Dr. Khalid Daoudi started as postdoctoral fellow on photo acoustic imaging. He will focus on clinical applications of photo-acoustic and high frequency ultrasound imaging.
September 1, 2015: Chris L. de Korte has been appointed full professor “Medical Ultrasound Techniques” at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
July 21, 2015: A Horizon2020 grant was awarded for the project “MRI and Ultrasound Robotic Assisted Biopsies (MURAB)”. The goal of this project is to guide robotic biopsies by fusion of MRI and ultrasound data in combination with real-time tissue displacement imaging. At Radboudumc, we will develop 3D ultrasound based elasticity quantification and real-time ultrasound guidance of the needles. The project is a collaboration with Siemens NL, KUKA Roboter GmbH, Twente University, Ziekenhuisgroep Twente, Medical University of Vienna, and University of Verona. For more information see: http://www.murabproject.eu
April 1, 2015: Prof. Johan M Thijssen was honored with a royal decoration. He received the Officer's Cross in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his work on Medical Ultrasound Imaging and for his extensive social activities.
March 16, 2015: Thomas van den Heuvel started as a PhD student on the BabyViewer project. This project is a joint venture of MUSIC and DIAG.
February 1, 2015: Branislav Holländer started as PhD student at MUSIC
December 5, 2014: New Quality Assurance for UltraSound (QA4US II) software update available online for download. New: Trend reporting functionality download QA4US_II (v2.20b).
October 27, 2014: For the October 2014 'Battle of the Universities', Rik Hansen from Radiology and Jitske Jansen from Pharmacology and Toxicology worked on a kidney case. Their presentation on improvement of vascular access for dialysis was considered the best solution and they won the battle!
June 1, 2014: Aisha van den Abeelen started in June 2014 as a researcher on a study into the use of 3D ultrasound for breast cancer diagnosis.
April 1, 2014: Gijs Hendriks started as PhD student on the project entitled: “3D ultrasound elastography for detection of tumours in breast”.