Last Revised:
July 18, 2001
Copyright © 1998 - 2001
Joy P. Ku
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I am currently a grad student at Stanford University, studying
Electrical Engineering but doing research for the Division of
Vascular Surgery and taking classes in Computer Science,
Mechanical Engineering, and oh yeah, Electrical Engineering.
I am starting my sixth year and am headed down the home
stretch (I've got my fingers crossed!).
During my time here in the Cardiovascular Biomechanics Research Lab, I've worked on several different projects. These days I am focused on understanding the large amount of data we have collected on pig physiology before and after a thoraco-thoraco bypass operation. This data is also used to validate a surgical simulation system that we have developed. In contrast to most Ph.D.s, I feel that I have learned about many different topics--from magnetic resonance imaging to image segmentation to fluid dynamics to cardiovascular physiology to impedance modeling--rather than delved deeply into one topic. It's been a great learning experience! |
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Here are other projects that I've dabbled in over the years: |
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Three-dimensional ultrasound. This was my original thesis topic. I was working on converting the 2D ultrasound images, which are acquired freehand, into a 3D lattice. I have also explored different wavelet-based noise filtering algorithms for ultrasound images. Phantom design. To test the accuracy of the 3D ultrasound system and algorithms, I have built several ultrasound and MR-compatible phantoms. With the help of numerous people, I have experimented with and characterized a number of tissue mimic materials, including the standard agar mixture and polyvinyl alcohol cryogel. Here are MR images from the latest phantom that I built with help from my friend, Alec. Computer-aided surgical planning. In June 1998 our lab headed down to San Diego to present a demo of computer-aided surgical planning at the Society of Vascular Surgery meeting. My contribution was designing and implementing the visualization of the 3D models of the different surgical plans using VRML. It's pretty cool (no bias here!), and what's even more amazing is that we implemented this in 3 months!! |
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