Miguel A. González Ballester

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). 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

- Torrents-Barrena J, Piella G, Gratacós E, Eixarch E, Ceresa M & González Ballester MA 2020, 'Deep Q-CapsNet reinforcement learning framework for intrauterine cavity segmentation in TTTS fetal surgery planning', IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 39, no. 10, pp 3113-3124.

- Bonavita I, Rafael-Palou X, Ceresa M, Piella G, Ribas V & González Ballester MA 2020, 'Integration of convolutional neural networks for pulmonary nodule malignancy assessment in a lung cancer classification pipeline', Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedical Engineering, vol. 185, no. 105172, pp 1-9.

- Bernardino G, Benkarim O, Sanz de la Garza M, Prat-Gonzàlez S, Sepulveda A, Crispi F, Sitges M, Butakoff C, De Craene M, Bijnens B & González Ballester MA 2020, 'Handling confounding variables in statistical shape analysis - application to cardiac remodelling', Medical Image Analysis, vol. 65, no. 101792, pp 1-13.

- Benkarim OM, Piella G, Rekik I, Hahner N, Eixarch E, Shen D, Li G, González Ballester MA & Sanroma G 2020, 'A novel approach to multiple anatomical shape analysis: application to fetal ventriculomegaly', Medical Image Analysis, vol. 64, no. 101750, pp 1-14.

- Torrents-Barrena J, Piella G, Valenzuela-Alcaraz B, Gratacós E, Eixarch E, Ceresa M & González Ballester MA 2020, 'TTTS-STgan: Stacked generative adversarial networks for TTTS fetal surgery planning based on 3D ultrasound'. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 39, no. 11, pp 3595-3606.

- Perera-Bel E, Ceresa M, Torrents-Barrena J, Masoller N, Valenzuela-Alcaraz B, Gratacós E, Eixarch E & González Ballester MA 2020, 'Segmentation of the placenta and its vascular tree in Doppler ultrasound for fetal surgery planning', International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, vol. 15, no. 11, pp 1869-1879.

Selected research activities

Associate Editor Frontiers in Radiology - Artificial Intelligence in Radiology

Area Chair MICCAI, Associate Editor IEEE EMBC, Program Committee SPIE Medical Imaging