Prof. Dr. Sylvia Saalfeld has headed the new Computational Medicine Group in the Department of Computer Science and Automation at TU Ilmenau since April 2023.
Previously, she was head of the Computational Medicine research group at the STIMULATE research campus at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, where she completed her doctorate and habilitation. Her research activities included medical image analysis and computer-assisted therapy support for numerous neurovascular, oncological and interventional issues. For cerebrovascular pathologies in particular, such as intravascular aneurysms or arteriovenous malformations, not only image-based approaches were developed under her leadership, but also deep learning techniques for 3D models (Geometric Deep Learning), which were previously extracted from medical image data. This enabled the researchers to combine and simplify complex blood flow simulations with the deep learning networks. This work was the basis for two DFG proposals, the latter of which is part of the active DFG Priority Program 2311, which investigates the potential of in silico models in medicine.
Further research areas of Prof. Saalfeld are the processing and co-registration of multimodal data sets, which include clinical data such as CT, MRI or 3D-DSA as well as experimental data, histology or vessel wall imaging, interactive visual analysis and immersive virtual reality applications. These can be used for the education and training of interventional physicians.