The NIH/NIGMS
Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing

A "typical" workflow that applies to many problems in biomedical simulation contains the  following elements: (i) Image acquisition and processing for a tissue, organ or region of interest (imaging and image processing), (ii) Identification of structures, tissues, cells or organelles within the images(image processing and segmentation), (iii) Fitting of geometric surfaces to the boundaries between structures and regions (geometric modelling), (iv) Generation of three-dimensional volume mesh from hexahedra or tetrahedra (meshing), and (v) Application of tissue parameters and boundary conditions and computation of spatial distribution of scalar, vector or tensor quantities of interest (simulation).

Over the past year the CIBC, in partnership with our collaborators, has begun to introduce a generalized processing pipeline and associated software to the biomedical community. This work has been largely influenced by DBP collaborators such as those collaborating to develop optimization strategies for ICD placement in children; Dr. John Triedman at the Department of Cardiology, Children's Hospital Boston, Dr. Matthew Jolley, Stanford University Medical Center. and Drs. Elizabeth Saarel, Tom Pilcher, and Michael Puchalski, all from the Department of Cardiology at Primary Childrens' Hospital in Salt Lake City. Additionally, collaborative work with the goal of the making osseointegrated amputee implants part of an electrical system to accelerate skeletal attachment also influenced the creation of the pipeline described below; collaborators are Brad Isaacson, Dr. Joseph Webster, Dr. James Beck, and Dr. Roy Bloebaum from the Department of Veteran Affairs and University of Utah.