João Ramalhinho

Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Hawkes Institute in University College London
Research Interests: Image-guided surgery, Interventional Ultrasound, Parallel Computing, Medical Imaging, Human Computer Interfaces
e-mail: joao.ramalhinho.15@ucl.ac.uk

Research

My research concerns the development of easy to deploy image-guidance tools for medical interventions.

My main work has focused on the multi-modal fusion of ultrasound or video images with pre-operative scan data such as CT or MR for clinicians to better perceive the intra-operative scene.

Additional works include also Augmented Reality and Visualisation, Surgical Navigation, and Usability Assessments.

I am open to any collaborations in related topics.

Main Publications

The value of Augmented Reality in Surgery - a usability study on Laparoscopic Liver Surgery

João Ramalhinho, Bongjin Koo, Soojeong Yoo, Thomas Dowrick, Bongjin Koo, Murali Somasundaram, Kurinchi Gurusamy, David J. Hawkes, Brian Davidson, Ann Blandford, Matthew J. Clarkson - Medical Image Analysis 2023

A study that objectively measures how an Augmented Reality overlay can help surgeons during laparoscopic surgery.

Deep Hashing for Global Registration of Untracked 2D Laparoscopic Ultrasound to CT

João Ramalhinho, Bongjin Koo, Nina Montaña-Brown, Shaheer U. Saeed, Ester Bonmati, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Stephen P. Pereira, Brian Davidson, Yipeng Hu, Matthew J. Clarkson - IPCAI/IJCARS 2022

A novel application of Deep Hashing to the problem of registering 2D Ultrasound images to 3D pre-operative volumes (such as CT or MR).

Registration of Untracked 2D Laparoscopic Ultrasound to CT Images of the Liver using Multi-Labelled Content-based Image Retrieval

João Ramalhinho, Henry F. J. Tregidgo, Kurinchi Gurusamy, David J. Hawkes, Brian Davidson, Matthew J. Clarkson - IEEE TMI 2021

A novel formulation for the 2D Ultrasound to 3D volume registration problem using Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR)

Registration of Untracked 2D Laparoscopic Ultrasound Liver Images to CT Using Content-Based Retrieval and Kinematic Priors

João Ramalhinho, Henry F. J. Tregidgo, Moustafa Allam, Nikolina Travlou, Kurinchi Gurusamy, David J. Hawkes, Brian Davidson, Dean Barrat, Matthew J. Clarkson MICCAI SUSI workshop 2019

Proof of concept results of Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) registration of 2D ultrasound to 3D CT volumes.

A pre-operative planning Framework for Global Registration of Laparoscopic Ultrasound to CT Images (2018)

João Ramalhinho, Maria R. Robu, Stephen Thompson, Kurinchi Gurusamy, David J. Hawkes, Brian Davidson, Dean Barratt, Matthew J. Clarkson - IPCAI/IJCARS 2018

A first study on the concept of surgical planning to obtain an automatic alignment between 3D Ultrasound volumes and a 3D pre-operative volume.

Breathing Motion Compensated Registration of Laparoscopic Liver Ultrasound to CT

João Ramalhinho, Maria R. Robu, Stephen Thompson, Phillip Edwards, Crispin Schneider, Kurinchi Gurusamy, David J. Hawkes, Brian Davidson, Dean Barratt, Matthew J. Clarkson - SPIE Medical Imaging 2017

A solution for the fine alignment of 3D Ultrasound volumes to 3D pre-operative volumes of the liver with breathing motion compensation.

Software

Fan-slicer: A Pycuda package for fast reslicing of Ultrasound shaped planes

João Ramalhinho, Thomas Dowrick, Ester Bonmati, Matthew J. Clarkson - JORS 2023

Open-source package in Github that enables the fast simulation of Ultrasound shaped images from 3D volumes. Written in Python, and compatible with Pytorch and Tensorflow frameworks. [code][paper]

Other Publications

Can Engineers represent surgeons in usability studies? Comparison from evaluating Augmented Reality Guidance for Laparoscopic Surgery

Soojeong Yoo, João Ramalhinho, Thomas Dowrick, Murali Somasundaram, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Brian R. Davidson, Matthew J. Clarkson, Ann Blandford - Computers and Graphics 2024

Comparative study on how surgeons and engineers perform in usability studies for healthcare.

Image-guidance in Endoscopic Pituitary Surgery: an in-silico study of errors involved in tracker-based techniques

Aure Enkaoua, Mobarakol Islam, João Ramalhinho, Thomas Dowrick, James Booker, Danyal Z. Khan, Hani J. Marcus, Matthew J. Clarkson - Frontiers in Surgery 2023

First study quantifying accuracy of optically tracked navigation for endoscopic pituitary surgery.

Evaluation of a Calibration rig for Stereo Laparoscopes

Thomas Dowrick, Guofang Xiao, Daniil Nikitichev, Eren Dursun, Niels van Berkel, Moustafa Allam, Bongjin Koo, João Ramalhinho, Stephen Thompson, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Ann Blandford, Danail Stoyanov, Brian R. Davidson, Matthew J. Clarkson - Medical Physics 2023

Evaluation of a novel device for calibration of laparoscopes to an optical tracking system.

Vessel Segmentation for Automatic Registration of Untracked Laparoscopic Ultrasound to CT of the Liver

Nina Montaña-Brown, João Ramalhinho, Moustafa Allam, Brian Davidson, Yipeng Hu, Matthew J. Clarkson - IPCAI/IJCARS 2021

First attempt at Deep Learning based segmentation of blood vessels in Laparoscopic Ultrasound images of the liver. Results integrated in automatic CBIR registration framework.

Endoscopic Ultrasound Image Synthesis Using a Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Network

Alex Grimwood, João Ramalhinho, Zachary M. C. Baum, Nina Montaña-Brown, Gavin J. Johnson, Yipeng Hu, Matthew J. Clarkson, Stephen P. Pereira, Dean Barrat, Ester Bonmati - MICCAI ASMUS Workshop 2021

Global Rigid Registration of CT to video in Laparoscopic Liver Surgery

Maria R Robu, João Ramalhinho, Stephen Thompson, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Brian Davidson, David Hawkes, Danail Stoyanov, Matthew J Clarkson - IPCAI/IJCARS 2018

One of the first attempts at Automatic and Global Registration of CT to Video of the Liver for Laparoscopic surgery.

Intelligent viewpoint selection for efficient CT to video registration in laparoscopic liver surgery

Maria R Robu, Philip Edwards, João Ramalhinho, Stephen Thompson, Brian Davidson, David Hawkes, Danail Stoyanov, Matthew J Clarkson - IPCAI/IJCARS 2017