Committee Meeting VCs' Committee Meeting - Higher Education ...

Commission Events
HEC Scholar Completes PhD from
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Muhammad
Faisal Khan,
w h o h a s
completed his
PhD in medical
i m a g e
p r o c e s s i n g
under Higher
Education Commission's Scheme
'Development of High Level S&T
Manpower through Split PhD”, has
joined Military College of Signals
(MCS), National University of
Sciences and Technology (NUST)
as Assistant Professor.
Khan joined Georgia Institute of
Technology, USA in 2003 as a PhD
th
scholar, which is ranked as 4 best
engineering university in USA for
last many years. Earlier, he did BS in
Electrical (Telecom) Engineering
from University of Engineering and
Technology, Lahore and worked in
the telecom industry for eight
years.
During his PhD studies, Dr. Khan
worked on design and development
of passive optical networks (PONs),
proposed a new architecture and
MAC protocol for the WDM PONs
and a highly reliable and scalable
linear add drop (LAD) architecture
for PONs. He also worked on
medical image processing in
Biomedical Imaging and Modelling
HEC Evaluates Performance of
Area Study Centres
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) as a follow up
of its meetings between its representatives and the
Ministry of Education convened a meeting of Directors
rd
of Area Study Centres at its headquarters on 3 August,
2010. Dr. S. Sohail H. Naqvi, Executive Director, HEC
chaired the first session of the meeting while Dr. Altaf Ali
G. Shaikh, Member (Academics), HEC chaired the
Lab (BIML) under the supervision
of Dr. Oskar Skrinjar.
Movement disorders, which include
Parkinson's disease (PD), dystonia,
essential tremor (ET) and
H u n t i n g t o n s d i s e a s e , a r e
neurological conditions caused by a
dysfunction in the basal ganglia.
Possible treatment options are
d r u g - b a s e d , s t e r e o t a c t i c
neurosurgery and physical therapy.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS)
s u r g e r y, a t y p e o f t h e
microelectrode-guided surgery, is
an effective treatment for the
movement disorders that can no
longer be treated through
medication. The success of this
surgery is critically dependent on
implantation accuracy of DBS
electrode array in the selected
target in the brain. These target
locations are usually not visible in
the commonly used Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (MRI) or
Computed Tomography (CT).
Dr. Khan also developed new
method for rigid and non-rigid
image registration of 3D MRI scans
for DBS operated movement
disorders patients. The method
was also used to develop an
a l g o r i t h m f o r a t l a s - b a s e d
segmentation of the deep brain
structures in the pre-operative
5
image for planning and navigation
of the DBS surgery.
For intra-operative brain shift
analysis during the DBS surgery, Dr.
Khan developed a diploë based
rigid registration method for the
intra-operative brain shift analysis.
He used this diploë based rigid
registration to register the pre-op
and the post-op MR images of DBS
subjects to study the intraoperative
brain deformation or
brain shift. These methods ensure
rigid registration of the pre-op and
the post-op image based on diploë,
which can be treated as a rigid
structure as opposed to brain
tissues.
Most of the DBS targets are not
clearly visible in the common
imaging modalities like MRI and CT
due to their small size and lack of
tissue type variation from the
surrounding structures. Dr. Khan
developed an integrated electrophysiological
and anatomical atlas
for the DBS surgery. He presented
an integrated MRI atlas that had 11
deep brain structures, manually
segmented in it by an expert, and
electrophysiological data of four
implant locations using MR images
of twenty DBS operated patients.
The atlas based segmentation
approach predicted the target
automatically on the pre-operative
scan as opposed to the manual
selection being currently used.
second session of the meeting. Mr. Muhammad Javed
Khan, Adviser (Academics), HEC, Dr. Muhammad Latif,
Director General (R&D), HEC were also present on the
occasion.
From the Area Study Centres included Dr. Parveen Shah,
Director Area Study centre for East and South Asia,
University of Jamshoro, Dr. Sarfaraz Khan, Director Area
Study centre for Russia, China and Central Asia,
University of Peshawar, Dr. Naveed Ahmed Tahir,
Director Area Study Centre for Europe, University of