Cell-Graphs for Tissue Representation and Quantification

Dr. Bulent Yener

Department of Computer Science

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Date: Monday November 14, 2005

Time: 12:20 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.

Location: 367 Votey

Abstract

This talk introduces a novel mathematical technique called the cell-graphs to represent and quantify the information encoded in a tissue sample. The cell-graphs are generated from the low-cost, low-magnification tissue images according to the spatial distribution of the cells. The mathematical properties of cell-graphs provide a set of features that can be used by machine learning techniques to characterize the properties of the underlying tissue. It is shown that cell-graph approach leads to successful tissue diagnosis of a brain cancer called "malignant glioma". The cell-graph approach can also be used decision support system in several other areas including tissue engineering, measurement of drug responsiveness, and other types of cancer diagnosis and prognostication. In this talk we will first present the techniques to obtain cell-graphs of glioma and discuss future work.

This is joint work with Cigdem Demir at RPI and Hume Gultekin at OHSU.

About the speaker:

Bulent Yener is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Co-Director of Pervasive Computing and Networking Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He is also a member of Griffiss Institute of Information Assurance. Dr. Yener received MS. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, both from Columbia University, in 1987 and 1994, respectively. Before joining to RPI, he was a Member of Technical Staff at the Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. His current research interests include bioinformatics, medical infortatics, routing problems in wireless networks, security and information assurance, intelligence and security informatics. He has served on the Technical Program Committee of leading IEEE conferences and workshops. Currently He is an associate editor of ACM/Kluwer Winet journal and the IEEE Network Magazine. Dr. Yener is a Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society.

(This seminar is hosted by Computer Science Student Association.)