Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Practice
Education
- Doctoral Degree, Biophysics, University of California - Los Angeles
- Bachelor's Degree, Electrical Engineering, University of California - Los Angeles
Biography
Dr. Brent Liu earned a Ph.D. degree from the UCLA Biomedical Physics Graduate Program and performed research as a Post Doctorate. During his graduate student research at UCLA from 1991 to 1996, Dr. Brent Liu had been involved in various medical image processing and informatics research projects. These include the analyses, design, implementation, and evaluation of an automatic image segmentation system based on object-oriented, knowledge base, and database-engineering principles applied to the image segmentation of bones in pediatric hand radiographs. Dr. Liu also researched and developed several image-processing applications such as image noise smoothing based on merging cluster of pixels with the aid of statistical information, removal of grid line artifacts in digitized X-ray images using Fourier Analysis filtering.
Upon graduation, Dr. Liu continued his post-doctorate research at UCLA from 1996 to 1999. During this time, Dr. Liu researched and designed a software module to capture Medical Imaging and Information data for the purposes of teaching, reviewing, and conferencing on a PACS workstation. Along with this software module, Dr. Liu contributed to the development of a suite of object-oriented class libraries to support methodological development of diagnostic PACS workstation functions and applications. These included the development of a software toolkit to convert current UCLA-proprietary PACS data into DICOM-compliant data files and the research of the use of adaptive and intelligent user interfaces and reading protocols in diagnostic PACS workstations.
From 1999 to 2002, he lead the implementation of a fully filmless PACS in a clinical setting within the Imaging Department of a high-profile community hospital (Saint John's Health Care, Santa Monica, CA). This included not only LAN PACS within the hospital but also WAN PACS to the physician's desktops. He was also involved with the planning and integration of other new information and imaging systems related to PACS, which include Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Oncology along with Radiology. He has served as a PACS consultant for another hospital to assist them in their integration of a fully filmless PACS. In 2002 to 2003, he also managed the implementation of a fully filmless PACS within a high-profile academic hospital (University of California Los Angeles Healthcare, Westwood, CA) that has multiple campus sites. His experience in PACS implementation is unique since he has had multiple contacts and interactions with various healthcare centers as well as the imaging industry. In addition, he brings hands-on practical knowledge of implementing different vendor PACS in both a high-profile community hospital and a large-scale academic hospital and the different experiences associated with both.
In 2003 he held an Honorary Lectureship at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he taught workshop courses in PACS Implementation, and Acceptance Testing Design/Development.
For the past five years, he has been actively administering and training within the Biomedical Imaging Informatics Training Program guiding trainees into different avenues of medical imaging informatics research. This current proposal is a competitive renewal application for the continuation of this training program. He has been strategic in bridging the gap between the two schools of engineering and medicine, as well as the different disciplines of learning, to help guide undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students and trainees to perform clinically translational and collaborative research within Medical Imaging Informatics. He teaches two required Graduate level courses at the Biomedical Engineering Department in Medical Imaging Informatics (BME527: Integration of Medical Imaging Systems & BME528: Medical Imaging Informatics).
Research Summary
His research areas of interest include Medical Imaging Informatics; Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) clinical uptime and usability; new PACS technology; Imaging Informatics Extended to Surgery, Cardiology, and Radiotherapy; Disaster Recovery and Fault-Tolerant design for PACS; design and implementation of high-resolution image display workstations; next generation Internet and its clinical applications; and advances in the area of image processing and information management for healthcare. He has expanded his research in designing a methodology for developing imaging-based electronic patient records (ePR) with built-in decision support in specific clinical applications to form a powerful and robust tool for longitudinal clinical research in specific disease types. He has applied this imaging informatics methodology in the fields of Oncology, Surgery, and Neurology to expand the frontiers of research in medical imaging informatics and is well poised to guide and train new scientists pursuing this area of academic research.
Awards
- 2004 Certificate of Merit Award, RSNA2004 for Inforad Exhibit
- 2003 Certificate of Merit Award, RSNA2003 for Inforad Exhibit
- 2001 Certificate of Merit Award, RSNA2001 for Educational Exhibit
