Conference on Modern Challenges in Imaging in the Footsteps of Allan Cormack

Tufts University, Medford MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will support participants in the conference "Modern Challenges in Imaging in the Footsteps of Allan Cormack" at Tufts University, August 5-9, 2019. Tufts professor Allan Cormack provided the mathematical foundations of X-ray computed tomography, winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1979 for this work. This international conference will honor his achievements and expand on his legacy by gathering top international researchers in mathematics, engineering, science, and medicine to communicate current research challenges and to inspire new lines of inquiry. Image reconstruction plays a crucial role in many aspects of human life such as healthcare, national security, non-destructive testing, and geophysical exploration - all of which will be represented at this conference. Image reconstruction involves the determination of features of an object based on some measured or observed data from the exterior of the object. The measurements are acquired using data from X-rays, pressure waves, sound waves, electric current, etc. The recovery of the object from this data is known as an inverse problem, which is solved using either analytic reconstruction formulas or iterative methods. The conference is structured to provide cross-fertilization between fields and to provide opportunities for senior and junior researchers to interact. This will be promoted at several levels: between subject areas; between prominent and younger researchers; and with a very strong emphasis on discussions between graduate students and established researchers. Graduate students and those new to the field will be encouraged to participate in a poster session in which they will present their research. Diverse groups of faculty and students will be recruited through broad advertising. Results are planned to be disseminated in a special issue of one of the premier journals in the field of inverse problems and, when possible, talks will be posted on the conference website https://math.tufts.edu/faculty/equinto/Cormack2019/. A large portion of the conference will involve the following topics: X-ray, optical, photo-acoustic, multi-energy, Compton, and multi-spectral tomography. The conference will also include dynamic tomography and limited data problems. Conference themes include the mathematics and algorithms behind tomographic reconstruction, including machine learning, data diversity, sparse sampling, regularization, dictionary learning, and related approaches. Along with this, lectures will be given on the theoretical underpinnings of tomography including integral geometry and microlocal reconstruction. Finally, the conference will deal with applications including those in medical, security, and industrial domains. These topics are highly interrelated and the conference will serve as an avenue for researchers to share their insights and results among the different specializations. Researchers from pure, applied, and computational mathematics and computer science, as well as from science, industry, and medicine will participate in the conference. This will facilitate new collaborations among participants from the different areas to target opportunities for synergy across disciplines to catalyze new research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.