UCL Doctoral Training Programme in Medical and Biomedical Imaging

Critical Review of Key Papers in Biomedical Imaging (The Journal Club)

Course Information

    Terms: 1,2,3 

    Assessment: Presentation, Class Contribution and Coursework

    Course Organisers: Dr Andrew Melbourne, Dr Tammy Kalber, Dr Ivana Drobnjak

Aims and Objectives

Understanding and forming an accurate opinion of a journal article is a crucial skill for research; the DTP Journal Club aims to equip students with the skills necessary to carry out a critical review of literature relevant to their field.

Students will work together through group work and discussion to develop skills for critical thinking and reviewing, and understand the motivation for paper writing whilst developing academic presentation skills.

Class Structure

In 2011/2012 the DTP MRes students, each week in rotation, will present a paper chosen by an academic member of staff. The format will be a 20 minute presentation by the lead presenter, plus any other comments. The remaining members of the group will get 20 minutes to ask questions or add their own opinions. The remaining time will be open to any other members of the audience to ask questions. 

Each week, one paper will be chosen by an academic member of staff who will then chair the discussion of that paper. 

Assessment and Feedback

Students will be assessed in three categories:

Presentation Skills (once during each rotation): In the week that a student is the lead presenter of a paper, they will be assessed on their general presentation skills, strength of conclusions and ability to handle questions.

Class Contribution (throughout the year): Students will be expected to contribute to the class throughout the year by raising questions, contributing to the discussion and voicing opinions. Attendance will form a component of class contribution.

Individual Paper Review (one at the end of each rotation): Students will be asked to submit a written review of one of the papers from each rotation. The review should summarise the paper and reflect upon contemporary literature. In the case of older papers, it is expected that some discussion of their subsequent impact should be present. The review should not exceed 1000 words.

Feedback

At the end of each rotation, there will be a feedback session for the organisers to provide feedback to the students and for the students to comment on the papers.

Important Dates

The first session of the DTP Journal Club will be on 10th October 2012 in MPEB 2.14 from 2-4pm.

The deadline for the first individual paper review will be around middle of February 2013.

The deadline for the second individual paper review will be around June 2013.

Syllabus

Unless otherwise stated, the DTP Journal Club will be held on Wednesdays in MPEB 2.14 between 2-3pm.

Term 1

1. 10th October 2012: Welcome to the DTP Journal Club. See the slides and booklet here. 2-4pm in MPEB 2.14.

2. 17th October 2012: Non-invasive mapping of connections between human thalamus and cortex using diffusion imaging, Behrens et al, Nature Neuroscience Vol 6 750-757 2003. Lead by Danny Alexander. See also Behrens 2003.

3. 24th October 2012: Voxel-Based Morphometry - The Methods. John Ashburner and Karl J. Friston, NeuroImage, 11, 805-821 2000. Lead by Sebastien Ourselin.

4. 31th October 2012: No session this week.

5. 7th November 2012: No session due to PhD retreat.

6. 14th November 2012: An analytical model of restricted diffusion in bovine optic nerve, Greg J. Stanisz et al, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 103–111, January 1997. Lead by Gary Zhang. .

7. 21st November 2012: Brain tissue sodium concentration in multiple sclerosis: a sodium imaging study at 3 tesla. Inglese M, et al. Brain. 2010 Mar;133(Pt 3):847-57. For background see Paling et al 2011. Lead by Claudia Wheeler-Kingshott

8. 28th November 2012: A System for Video-Based Navigation for Endoscopic Endonasal Skull Base Surgery. D. J. Mirota, et al. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING, VOL. 31, NO. 4, APRIL 2012. Lead by Dan Stoyanov.

9. 5th December 2012: No session this week.

10. 12th December 2012: In vivo imaging of glucose uptake and metabolism in tumors. S. Walker-Samuel et al, Nature Medicine, 2013, In Press. Lead by Xavier Golay.

Term 2

11. 16th January 2013: SENSE: Sensitivity encoding for fast MRI, KP Pruessmann et al. MAGNETIC RESONANCE IN MEDICINE 42:5 952-962 1999. Lead by David Atkinson.

12. 23rd January 2013: The importance of appropriate partial volume correction for PET quantification in Alzheimer’s disease. Thomas BA, et al. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2011; 38: 1104-1119. See also the review paper. Lead by Brian Hutton.

13. 30th January 2013: Learning in the Fast Lane: New Insights into Neuroplasticity. Yaniv Sagi et al, Neuron, Volume 73, Issue 6, 1195-1203, 2012. Lead by Mark Lythgoe. To be held in MPEB 1.19.

14. 6th February 2013: No session this week.

15. 13th February 2013: Feedback Session.

16. 20th February 2013: High-field MRI of brain cortical substructure based on signal phase. Jeff H. Duyn† et al, PNAS, 104, 28, 11796–11801, 2007. See also Haacke2005 for a review of iron imaging. Lead by Karin Shmueli.

17. 27th February 2013: Automatic CT-ultrasound registration for diagnostic imaging and image-guided intervention. W. Wein et al. Medical Image Analysis,Volume 12, Issue 5, October 2008, Pages 577–585. Lead by Dean Barratt.

18. 6th March 2013: Stable Signal Recovery from Incomplete and Inaccurate Measurements. Candes E., Romberg J. and Tao T. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. LIX, 1207–1223 (2006). Lead by Simon Arridge. See also the exercise provided here. To be held in MPEB 1.19.

19. 14th March 2013: Ultrasonographically detectable markers of fetal chromosomal abnormalities. Nicolaides KH et al, Lancet, 340:8821, 704-707 1992. Lead by Anna David. Note exceptionally this is on a Thursday and will be held in Anatomy B15.

20. 20th March 2013: Nonrigid registration using free-form deformations: application to breast MR images, D. Rueckert et al, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 18:8, 712-721, 1999. Lead by Dave Hawkes. 

Term 3

21. 10th April 2013: Magnetic resonance imaging of perfusion using spin inversion of arterial water. Williams DS et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 89(1), 212-216, 1992. Lead by David Thomas.

22. 17th April 2013: Finding Stationary Subspaces in Multivariate Time Series. Paul von Bünau et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 214101 (2009). See also von Bünau 2010 and a review paper Naci 2012. Lead by Louis Lemieux.

23. 24th April 2013: White, B.R. and Culver, J.P. (2010) Phase-encoded retinotopy as an evaluation of diffuse optical neuroimaging. NeuroImage 49, 568-577. See also the adjacent supplementary material. Lead by Jem Hebden. To be held in Roberts 105b.

24. 22nd May 2013: Final Feedback Session. To be held in MPEB 2.14.