Degree in Computer Science from Universitat Jaume I (1996), and doctorate from the University of Oxford (2000). I was a senior researcher at Toshiba Medical Systems (Japan), INRIA (France), and the University of Bern (Switzerland), where I was leading the Surgical Technology Division at the MEM Research Center, Faculty of Medicine. From 2008 until September 2013 I was in charge of the Research Department of the company Alma IT Systems in Barcelona. In October 2013 I was appointed ICREA Research Professor, and joined the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where I founded the Barcelona Centre for New Medical Technologies (BCN Medtech). I have more than 400 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences, and have supervised 22 PhD theses. I was awarded Fellowships from Toshiba and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Research interests
My research focus is on computerised medical image analysis and computer-assisted surgery, including: image processing and computer vision, image-based diagnosis through machine learning, deep learning, medical imaging physics, computational modelling and simulation of virtual organs and surgical interventions, navigation in computer-assisted surgery, surgical devices and implants, and applied clinical research. In addition to basic research with solid mathematical foundations, all my projects have a marked translational character, focusing on concrete clinical and industrial applications.
Selected publications
- Cetin I, Stephens M, Camara O & González Ballester MA 2023, 'Attri-VAE: Attribute-based interpretable representations of medical images with variational autoencoders', Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, vol. 104, no. 102158, pp 1-13.
- Perera-Bel E, Aycock KN, Salameh Z, Gómez-Barea M, Davalos RV, Ivorra A & González Ballester MA 2023, 'PIRET - A platform for treatment planning in electroporation-based therapies', IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 70, 6, 1902-1910.
- Jiménez-Sánchez A, Tardy M, González Ballester MA, Mateus D & Piella G 2023, 'Memory-aware curriculum federated learning for breast cancer classification', Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 229, no. 107318, pp 1-10.
- Bernardino G, Sepúlveda-Martínez A, Rodríguez-López M, Prat-Gonzalez S, Pajuelo C, Perea RJ, Caralt MT, Crovetto F, González Ballester MA, Sitges M, Gratacós E, Bijnens B & Crispi F 2023, 'Association of central obesity with unique cardiac remodeling in young adults born small for gestational age', European Heart Journal: Cardiovascular Imaging, vol. 24, no. 7, pp 930-937.
- Urru A, Nakaki A, Benkarim O, Crovetto F, Segales L, Comte V, Hahner N, Eixarch E, Gratacós E, Crispi F, Piella G & González Ballester MA 2023, 'An automatic pipeline for atlas-based fetal and neonatal brain segmentation and analysis.', Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 230, no. 107334, pp 1-14.
- Galdran A, Verjans J, Carneiro G & González Ballester MA 2023, 'Multi-head multi-loss model calibration', Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 14222. Medical Image Computing and Computer Aided Interventions - MICCAI 2023, Vancouver, Canada, 108-117.