2 Year Post-doctoral Research Position in Rennes 
(France), on the Synthesis and Simulation of Surgical Process Models

* Environment

To foster research and innovation at highest international level, the french 
government has launched the program “Investissements d’Avenir”. As part of the 
former, the program “Laboratoires d'Excellence” is assigned 1 billion Euros in 
capital, for a 10 years period. The CominLabs (http://www.cominlabs.ueb.eu) is 
an initiative selected as part of the “Laboratoires d’Excellence” program by 
the French ministry of research and education. It has been assigned 40 Million 
Euros in capital, resulting in an effective annual funding of 1.4 Million Euros 
for a 10-year period. The CominLabs has been the only Laboratoire d’Excellence 
selected in the area of software sciences. One research area of CominLabs is 
ICT for personalized medicine. Within this challenge, the project S3PM (« 
Synthesis and Simulation of Surgical Process Models ») has been selected as one 
of the first funded projects.

Proper computer assistance requires models of both conceptual and procedural 
knowledge. In surgery, focus has been done on conceptual knowledge with 
computation of realistic patient specific models from multimodal images and 
signals. In S3PM, we aim at computing generic models of surgical procedures 
from synthesis of structured recordings of patient specific procedures from 
surgical cases observations. We also aim at representing such generic models of 
procedural knowledge in order to be executed, for instance, on simulation 
engines. In this project we propose to study and adapt the methods developed by 
MediCIS, S4, and VR4i for computing, from individual recordings of procedures, 
generic surgical process models and representing and simulating them. The 
objective is to develop an enabling technology for procedural knowledge based 
computer assistance of surgery. In this project, we demonstrate its potential 
added value for high-level abstraction teaching applications.

* Missions and activities

The post-doctoral research is placed in the context of computer assisted 
surgery. More specifically, it aims at better understanding and formalizing 
surgical strategies and decision making process. For a specific patient who 
benefited from a surgical treatment, the followed surgical strategy can be 
described by a patient specific surgical process model (SPM). This SPM includes 
the list of the actions performed by the surgeon all along the surgical 
procedure. The precise objective of the postdoctoral position is to investigate 
new approaches for generating surgical knowledge from patient specific surgical 
process models. This surgical knowledge will be modelled by generic surgical 
process models.

The candidate will have to investigate a methodology for aggregating patient 
specific SPMs into generic SPMs, as well as new directions for representing, 
analyzing, and executing these gSPMs. Graph representations as well as 
probabilistic networks will be studied. The added value of ontological 
representation in the modelling of the gSPMs will be studied. Finally the 
candidate will validate the approaches in the context of surgical teaching 
applications. Databases of patient specific SPMs in neurosurgery, 
interventional neuroradiology and eye surgery are already available for testing 
and validating these approaches.

* Competence and Profile

The candidate should have a PhD in information processing, analysis or related 
subjects. Experience and publications related to process modeling or workflow 
analysis are a must. Programming skills are required (Matlab, C++, Java, OCaml, 
or C#). Skills in semantic web technologies (ontology languages OWL, RDFS, RDF) 
are welcome. Salary: about 2200 Euros / month (net). Duration: 2 years. 
Location: MediCIS team, Laboratory of Signal and Image Processing, Medical 
University, Rennes, France.

* Partners

Team MediCIS (P. Jannin, B. Gibaud) is one of the five research teams in the 
LTSI U1099 institute. This institute is dedicated to biomedical engineering, is 
composed by about 100 researchers and students and is part of the “ Institut 
national de la santé et de la recherche médicale” (INSERM), which is the 
leading research institute in medicine in France. MediCIS has an extensive 
experience in Image Guided and Computer Assisted Neurosurgery, Augmented 
Reality, and Surgical Process Modeling.

Team HYCOMES (B. Caillaud) is a joint Inria Rennes / Irisa team. Its main 
objective is the development of mathematical models, algorithms and tools 
supporting rigorous contract- based reasoning methods in embedded systems 
design. The team has a strong background on the realization by algorithmic 
methods of concurrent reactive systems from partial and heterogeneous 
specifications combining both logical properties and operational scenarios.

Team Hybrid (ex VR4i) (V. Gouranton, B. Arnaldi) is a joint Inria Rennes / 
Irisa team. The main concern is to allow real users to interact naturally 
within shared virtual environments, as interaction can be the result of an 
individual interaction of one user with one object or a common interaction of 
several users on the same object.

* Contact.

Application and CV should be sent to

        Pierre JANNIN MediCIS/UMR U1099 LTSI
        INSERM/Université de Rennes I
        2, Avenue du Pr. Léon Bernard
        CS34317 35043 Rennes Cedex France
        http://medicis.univ-rennes1.fr
        [email protected]

Some practical information: http://medicis.univ-rennes1.fr/

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