Events

June 22nd, 2020

The Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP), led by King’s College London and including Imperial College London and Oxford University aims to make major scientific progress by creating the first 4-dimensional connectome of early life.

Our goal is to create a dynamic map of human brain connectivity from 20 to 44 weeks post-conceptional age, which will link together imaging, clinical, behavioural, and genetic information.

This unique setting, with imaging and collateral data in an expandable open-source informatics structure, will permit wide use by the scientific community, and to undertake pioneer studies into normal and abnormal development by studying well-phenotyped and genotyped group of infants with specific genetic and environmental risks that could lead to Autistic Spectrum Disorder or Cerebral Palsy.

Wednesday May 6th 2020

The Gift-Surg (Guided Instrumentation for Fetal Therapy and Surgery) project aims at building a novel platform to transform the safety and efficacy of fetal surgery. GIFT-Surg is led by Prof Ourselin at KCL in collaboration with UCL, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven in Belgium, Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London Hospital.

Our vision is to  develop new instrumentation and software that will provide unprecedented capabilities for operating in utero, including enhanced pre-operative surgical planning, intraoperative guidance and advanced manipulation capabilities. Dr Andrew Melbourne and Dr Wenfeng Xia are project co-investigators leading on placenta MRI and ultrasonic needle tracking, respectively. They will present recent results of the work of their teams, currently undergoing pre-clinical validation.