FOR THE FIFTH consecutive year, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Paul F. Hemler held a summer appointment at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. He and several resident scientists perform collaborative research in the area of Medical Image Processing, Analysis, and Visualization. Their work has resulted in a peer-reviewed journal publication and three presentations at international scientific meetings with publication in the respective conference proceedings.

The paper entitled “Radio Frequency Ablation Registration, Segmentation, and Fusion Tool” was published in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ July 2006 issue of Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine. Hemler presented two papers in diff erent tracks at the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers International Symposium on Medical Imaging in San Diego, California, in February 2006. The first paper, presented in the Conference on Image Processing, was entitled “Vasculature segmentation for radio frequency ablation of hepatic tumors.” The second paper, “Assessment of radio frequency ablation treatment of hepatic tumors,” was presented in the Conference on Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Display.

Hemler’s continued research at the NIH and in collaboration with the National Institute of Aging during the summer of 2006 focused on using medical images to determine risk factors for the onset of osteoarthritis. This work resulted in a presentation within the Conference on Image Processing track of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers International Symposium on Medical Imaging in San Diego last February. Th e title of this paper, which appeared also in the conference proceedings, was “Semi-automatic tissue classification of magnetic resonance images of the thigh for application to largescale datasets.” Last summer Hemler wrote and submitted for review a paper based on his most recent research on osteoarthritis risk, “A system for sub-segmenting muscle in computed tomography images of the thigh.”

Hemler also presented a paper at the Annual Research Festival of NIH entitled “Segmentation of magnetic resonance images of the thighs” in October 2006. He has also submitted two papers for presentation in the 2007 NIH Research Festival, one on “Thigh Muscle Segmentation in Computed Tomography Images” and the second on “Java Based Volume Rendering.”

Hemler received his B.S. degree from Villanova University, his M.S. from Lehigh University, and his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University. He began teaching at the College in 2004 and was promoted to his present rank last spring.

BEYOND THE Classroom FOR THE Classroom
Hampden-Sydney College Faculty Scholarship 2005-2008
A report by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty