Overview

My research forms part of the University College Hospital Preterm Development Project (Growing up after extremely preterm birth, funded by the charity SPARKS). The research investigates how the segmentation and cortical folding patterns change between birth and term-equivalent age as seen on MR scans of very preterm babies (born <32 weeks gestational age). This work will aid prediction of long term functional outcome and further establish the sequence of human brain growth and development at this very young age.

Previously I have worked on motion correction applied to dynamic contrast enhanced MRI in the liver and breast [2011:1, 2007:1]. Subject movement within this type of scan can be detrimental to subsequent analysis of tissue pharmacokinetics, but motion correction is made difficult by the indistinguishability of contrast change and motion artefacts [2008:1]. In this area my work focuses on image registration techniques that are able to correct motion in the presence of contrast change. This work was funded by the EPSRC Grants GR/T 20434/0 and EP/E031579/1 and the European 7th Framework Program, HAMAM, ICT-2007.5.3.

Research

Improvements in neonatal care have reduced the lowest gestational age at which survival after premature birth becomes a clinical reality, however the prevalence of disabling conditions in survivors remains high. Many conditions are thought to be related to perinatal white matter injury affecting subsequent neurological maturation often investigated by postnatal MRI. This has stimulated efforts to develop MR markers of outcome to guide mitigating treatment or therapy. As part of the SPARKS Preterm Development Project, data acquired both shortly after birth and at term equivalent age provides a unique resource that may help describe the pathway from perinatal mechanical disruption of white matter to functional deficit at term and in early years, thus guiding biomarker development. Early work has investigated to what extent diffusion MRI derived connectivity properties of white matter can be correlated with the cortical folding pattern at term [2012:3,2012:5] and whether the cortical folding pattern itself independently describes functional neurological outcome [2012:1,2012:4,2011:2]. Investigations of this type may lead to improvements in postnatal care and treatment for high-risk premature infants in addition to providing insight into the ontological debate on the human cortical folding pattern and the theoretical links to underlying white matter structure and function.

Teaching

I organise the CMIC/CABI MRes Doctoral Training Program assessed Journal Club module. I also lecture and provide coursework and examinations for the Medical Image Computing MSc, the Computational Modelling for Biomedical Imaging MSc and the Physics of the Human Body undergraduate MSci Medical Physics course. I am also involved in undergraduate academic tutoring.

Biography

I obtained a 1^st Class MSci Physics degree from Imperial College London in 2005 followed by a PhD from UCL three years later investigating motion correction strategies in contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). I am now working as a Research Associate within the Centre for Medical Image Computing at University College London investigating the use of quantitative MRI in establishing the links between preterm birth and subsequent neuro-developmental outcome in babies born very preterm.

Publications

2012

[1] A. Melbourne, M. J. Cardoso, G. Kendall, N. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. AdaPT: an adaptive preterm segmentation algorithm for neonatal brain MRI. NeuroImage, In Press:XX, 2012. (Joint first authorship).
[2] A. Melbourne. Comment on: Automated registration of sequential breath-hold dynamic contrast-enhanced MR images: a comparison of three techniques. MRI, In Press, 2012. [3] A. Melbourne, M. J. Cardoso, G. Kendall, N. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. Adaptive neonatal MRI brain segmentation with myelinated white matter class and automated extraction of ventricles I-IV. In MICCAI Challenge on Neonatal Brain Segmentation (NeoBrainS12 Challenge), In Press, 2012.
[4] A. Melbourne, M. J. Cardoso, G. Kendall, N. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. A cortical surface analysis of very preterm infants on term-equivalent age MRI. In MICCAI Workshop on Perinatal and Paediatric Imaging: PaPI 2012, In Press, 2012.
[5] A. Melbourne, G. S. Kendall, M. J. Cardoso, R. Gunney, N. J. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. Radial structure in the preterm cortex; persistence of the preterm phenotype at term equivalent age? In MICCAI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012.
[6] D. Cash, A. Melbourne, M. Modat, M. J. Cardoso, M. Clarkson, N. Fox, and S. Ourselin. Cortical folding analysis on patients with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. In MICCAI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012.
[7] A. Melbourne, G. Kendall, M. J. Cardoso, N. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. Analysing the cortical folding pattern of very preterm neonates scanned at term-equivalent age: correlations with diffusion tensor tractography. In ISMRM, number 95, 2012.
[8] A. Melbourne, G. Kendall, M. J. Cardoso, N. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. Investigating the spatial folding pattern of very preterm neonatal cortex scanned at term-equivalent age. In ISMRM, number 3158, 2012.
[9] A. Melbourne. Correcting patient movement in dynamic contrast enhanced MRI. In ISMRM Educational Session, number 4287, 2012.
[10] A. Melbourne, M. J. Cardoso, G. Kendall, N. Robertson, N. Marlow, and S. Ourselin. Outlier rejection for adaptive neonatal segmentation. In ISMRM, number 3173, 2012.
[11] V. Hamy, A. Melbourne, B.Tremoulheac, S. Punwani, and D. Atkinson. Registration of DCE-MRI using robust data decomposition. In ISMRM, number 749, 2012.
[12] A. Melbourne, N. Cahill, C. Tanner, S. Ourselin, and D. J. Hawkes. Using fractional gradient information in nonrigid image registration: application to breast MRI. In SPIE Medical Imaging, number 8314 70, 2012.

2011

[1] A. Melbourne, J. Hipwell, M. Modat, T. Mertzanidou, H. Huisman, S. Ourselin, and D. J. Hawkes. The effect of motion correction on pharmacokinetic parameter estimation in dynamic-contrast-enhanced MRI. Phys Med Biol, 56(24):7693{7708,
Nov 2011.
[2] A. Melbourne, G. S. Kendall, M. J. Cardoso, C. F. Hagmann, A. Bainbridge, N. Marlow, N.J. Robertson, and S. Ourselin. Automated analysis of the preterm neonatal cortex at term equivalent age and correlation with cognitive outcome at 1 year corrected age. In ESPR, 2011.
[3] M. J. Cardoso, A. Melbourne, G. S. Kendall, C. F. Hagmann, A. Bainbridge, N. Marlow, N.J. Robertson, and S. Ourselin. Adaptive neonatal brain segmentation: application to ventriculomegaly and excess extra-axial cerebral-spinal fluid. In ESPR, 2011.
[4] M. J. Cardoso, Andrew Melbourne, Giles S. Kendall, Marc Modat, Cornelia F. Hagmann, Nicola J. Robertson, Neil Marlow and Sebastien Ourselin. Adaptive neonate brain segmentation. Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv, 14(Pt 3):378-386, 2011.
[5] A. Melbourne, J. Hipwell, M. Modat, T. Mertzanidou, H. Huisman, S. Ourselin, and D. J. Hawkes. Image registration and pharmacokinetic parameter estimation for 3d DCE-MR mammography. In ISMRM, number 3097, 2011.
[6] Y. Jafar, J. Hipwell, C. Tanner, A. Melbourne, and D. J. Hawkes. Discretisation of 3d deformation fields: Implications for establishing correspondence between 2d x-ray mammographic projections. In Proc. IEEE Int Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro Symp, pages 1998{2001, 2011.
[7] A. Melbourne, N. D. Cahill, C. Tanner, and D. J. Hawkes. Image registration using an extendable quadratic regulariser. In Proc. IEEE Int Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro Symp, pages 557-560, 2011.

2010

[1] A. Melbourne, J. Hipwell, and D. J. Hawkes. The effect of motion correction on pharmacokinetic parameter estimation. In International Workshop on Digital Mammography, number 6136, pages 744{751. LNCS, Springer-Verlag, 2010.
[2] A. Melbourne, D. J. Hawkes, and D. Atkinson. Data driven groupwise registration of diffusion weighted images. In Proc. IEEE Int Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro Symp, pages 352-355, 2010.
[3] A. Melbourne, G. Ridgway, and D. J. Hawkes. Image similarity metrics in image registration. In SPIE Medical Imaging, number 7623 112, 2010.

2009

[1] A. Melbourne. Alignment of Contrast Enhanced Medical Images. PhD thesis, University College London, 2009.
[2] A. Melbourne, D. Hawkes, and D. Atkinson. Image registration using uncertainty coefficients. In Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro ISBI '09, pages 951-954, 2009.
[3] M. J. White, D. J. Hawkes, A. Melbourne, D. J. Collins, C. Coolens, M. Hawkins, M. O. Leach, and D. Atkinson. Motion artifact correction in free-breathing abdominal MRI using overlapping partial samples to recover image deformations. Magn Reson Med, 62(2):440-449, Aug 2009.
[4] A. Melbourne, D. J. Collins, M. O. Leach, D. M. Koh, D. J. Hawkes, and D. Atkinson. Contrast enhanced image registration using kullbach-leibler assisted image matching and patching (KLAMP). In ISMRM, number 4223, 2009.
[5] A. Melbourne, M. Orton, D. J. Collins, D. M. Koh, M. O. Leach, D. J. Hawkes, and D. Atkinson. The effect of image registration on pharmacokinetic parameter extraction using 3d DCE-MRI. In ISMRM, number 4216, 2009.

2008

[1] A. Melbourne, D. Atkinson, and D. Hawkes. Influence of organ motion and contrast enhancement on image registration. Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv, 11(Pt 2):948-955, 2008.
[2] A. Melbourne, D. J. Hawkes, and D. Atkinson. Non-rigid registration of diffusion weighted MRI using progressive principal component registration (PPCR). In ISMRM, number 3097, 2008.

2007

[1] A. Melbourne, D. Atkinson, M. J. White, D. Collins, M. Leach, and D. Hawkes. Registration of dynamic contrast-enhanced mri using a progressive principal component registration (PPCR). Phys Med Biol, 52(17):5147{5156, Sep 2007.
[2] A. Melbourne, D. Atkinson, M. J. White, D. J. Collins, M. O. Leach, and D. J. Hawkes. Registration of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI using a progressive principal component registration (ppcr). In ISMRM, number 522, 2007.
[3] A. Melbourne, D. Atkinson, M. J. White, D. J. Collins, M. O. Leach, and D. J. Hawkes. Using registration to quantify the consistency of whole liver position during patient breath-hold in dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI. In ISMRM, number 3709, 2007.

Contact Details

Centre for Medical Image Computing,
University College London,
3rd Floor, Engineering Front Building,
Malet Place,
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
 
Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 0221 TBA (Direct Dial)
Fax: +44 (0)20 7387 1397
Email: a.melbourne(at)cs.ucl.ac.uk