Miguel A. González Ballester

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Engineering Sciences

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 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 lead the Barcelona Centre for New Medical Technologies (BCN Medtech) and hold the QUAES Foundation Chair. I have approx. 300 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences, and have supervised 20 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, 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 (notably my work on statistical biomechanical models), all my projects have a marked translational character, focusing on concrete clinical and industrial applications.

Selected publications

- López-Linares K, Aranjuelo N, Kabongo L, Maclair G, Lete N, Ceresa M, García-Familiar A, Macía I & González Ballester MA 2018, ' Fully automatic detection and segmentation of abdominal aortic thrombus in post-operative CTA images using deep convolutional neural networks', Medical Image Analysis, vol. 46, pp 202-2014.

- Ceresa M, Olivares AL, Noailly J & González Ballester MA 2018, 'Coupled immunological and biomechanical model of emphysema progression', Frontiers in Physiology, vol. 9, no. 388, pp 1-16.

- Ruiz G, Ramón E, García J, Sukno FM & González Ballester MA 2018, 'Weighted regularized statistical shape space projection for breast 3D model reconstruction', Medical Image Analysis, vol. 47, pp 164-179.

- Mangado N, Pons-Prats J, Kjer HM, Mistrik P, Piella G, Ceresa M & González Ballester MA 2018, 'Computational evaluation of cochlear implant surgery outcomes accounting for uncertainty and parameter variability', Frontiers in Physiology, vol. 9, no. 498, pp. 1-14.

- López Picazo M, Magallón Baro A, del Río Barquero LM, di Gregorio S, Martelli Y, Romera J, Steghofer M, González Ballester MA & Humbert L 2018, '3-D subject-specific shape and density estimation of the lumbar spine from a single anteroposterior DXA image including assessment of cortical and trabecular bone', IEEE Transactions On Medical Imaging, vol. 37, no. 12, pp 2651-2662.

- Sanroma G, Benkarim OM, Piella G, Lekadir K, Hahner N, Eixarch E & González Ballester MA 2018, 'Learning to combine complementary segmentation methods for fetal and 6-month infant brain MRI segmentation',  Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, vol. 69, pp 52-59.

- Sanroma G, Benkarim OM, Piella G, Camara O, Wu G, Shen D, Gispert JD, Molinuevo JL & González Ballester MA 2018, 'Learning non-linear patch embeddings with neural networks for label fusion', Medical Image Analysis, vol. 44, pp 143-155.

Selected research activities

(Selected publications. Total: 18 journal papers and 33 conference publications in 2018)