Gabor Fichtinger, DrUniv: Point-of-care-ultrasound Guided Therapies and Interventions in the Global Health Context

Gabor Fichtinger, Dr.Univ.

Professor and Canada Research Chair in Computer-Integrated Surgery
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Point-of-care-ultrasound guided therapies and interventions, shortly POCUS-IGT, enables treatment at the bedside, whether in an urban hospital, rural clinic, or mobile care unit. The potential use of POCUS-IGT in interventions like injections, biopsies, drainages, ablations and surgeries is virtually unlimited. As such, POCUS-IGT can transcend geographic and socio-economic boundaries and thus bring closer the ideal of democratization of access to healthcare. In the global context, sustainable development of POCUS-IGT programs is dependent on the availability of free open-source software platforms, as the mean of rapid knowledge and technology translation. This talk will discuss the role of the 3D Slicer and SlicerIGT free open-source software ecosystems in the development of POCUS-IGT solutions and their global deployment though the Train the Trainer Program, an alliance between  the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Harvard Medical School and Queen’s University, working with clinical leaders, governments, and international organization toward establishing national POCUS-IGT programs in West Africa, particularly in Mauritania and Senegal.

Short Bio

Gabor received his doctoral degree in computer science from the Technical University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary, in 1990. He is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Computer-Integrated Surgery at Queen’s University, Canada, where he directs the Percutaneous Surgery Laboratory. His research and teaching specialize in computational imaging and robotic guidance for surgery and medical interventions, focusing on the diagnosis and therapy of cancer and musculoskeletal conditions. Prof. Fichtinger is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and Elsevier’s Medical Image Analysis, Deputy Editor for the International Journal of Computer Assisted Surgery Radiology. He has served on the boards of the International Society of Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Surgery (MICCAI) and the International Society of Computer Assisted Surgery (ISCAS). Prof. Fichtinger received many honours, including the Tier-1 Canada Research Chair, Cancer Care Ontario Research Chair, Royal Society of Canada Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AIMBE Fellow, MICCAI Fellow, Marie Curie Fellow, and Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE.