Our core team has a considerable level of experience in the field of respiratory imaging, which combined with our internal and external collaborations allows us to conduct a variety of research projects. We also support a number of PhD students who contribute significantly to our team.
Dr. Michael Bennett is a senior research scientist in the respiratory Biomedical Research Unit (BRU) at Southampton General Hospital. He was awarded a PhD degree from the University of Edinburgh in signal processing techniques for real-time B-mode ultrasound imaging in cardiology in 2005.
In November 2004, Dr. Bennett began his research career as a Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh where we worked on the development of a state of the art Matlab toolkit for the analysis of radio-frequency and pulse-wave Doppler signals obtained from clinical ultrasound scanners.
In 2005 he became a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh as part of the Biologically Inspired Acoustic Systems (BIAS) project which was funded by the Basic Technology Research Programme of the Research Councils UK (RCUK). This project brought together experts in animal acoustics, mathematical and signal processing theory, the design of acoustical transducers and the implementation of experimental engineering systems to harness the acoustic capabilities of biological systems and use these in a range of practical engineering applications.
In 2009, Dr. Bennett moved to the post of Senior Research Scientist in Image Processing at the respiratory BRU in Southampton. His current work focuses on the development of computer software and algorithms to aid the diagnosis and measurement of lung diseases, especially Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). He works with a number of imaging modalities, including High Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT), planar gamma camera imaging and probe-based Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (pCLE). He is particularly involved in the development of techniques to support multi-modality image fusion to give the clinician additional information about the state of disease of the lung.
Professor Joy Conway has been an active researcher in the fields of inhaled aerosols and lung imaging for twenty years. Her PhD, supervised by Professor Holgate and awarded in 1996, applied single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to the fate of inhaled aerosols in the human lung in health and disease.
Appointed as a Lecturer in 2004 she continued to further her research interest in the application of SPECT to better understand respiratory disease. After a sabbatical at the Faculty of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, US (1999) and a period of work in industry working for Profile Theraputics plc and Britannia Phamaceuticals Ltd (2001-03) she was appointed Reader (2004) and then Professor of Inhalation Sciences (2009) at the University of Southampton.
Professor Conway in a named inventor on several patents and was a founder and Director of Ocham Biotech Ltd (2003-09). She sits on the executive committee of Drug Delivery to the Lungs (an annual, international conference) and is a member of an international committee appointed by the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine to set global standards in lung imaging.
Professor Conway is a co-lead for the Southampton Respiratory Imaging Group and co-lead for imaging as part of the NIHR appointed Southampton Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit.
Professor John Fleming is a Consultant Medical Physicist and Scientific Lead of the Imaging Group of the Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. He also holds an honorary chair at the University of Southampton.
He has a BSc in physics and PhD in medical physics from the University of Southampton (1970 and 1976). He has been working in the field of nuclear medicine and imaging physics for over 40 years, working as Head of Nuclear Medicine Physics in Southampton for most of that period. His work has included developments in both image formation and in the analysis and interpretation of the data. In particular, he has introduced novel methods of quantifying nuclear medicine images and their application to measurement of physiological parameters.
His principal current research interest is the use of imaging in respiratory disease. He has published around 140 research articles in nuclear medicine physics. He is a reviewer or editorial board member for a number of science journals and sits on several national or international advisory panels. In the UK he has been instrumental in setting up an audit scheme for nuclear medicine software and in producing guidelines for measurement of glomerular filtration rate.
Dr Matt Guy is Clinical Lead for Medical Physics and Head of Imaging Physics at University Hospital Southampton. He has extensive experience across both diagnostic and therapeutic applications of Nuclear Medicine, including PET/CT, and in the development of dual-energy CT imaging techniques. Whilst working at the Institute of Cancer Research, he developed one of the first patient-specific dose planning systems for Targeted Radionuclide Therapies and also worked extensively on improving the quantification of high count-rate SPECT imaging. He has developed a range novel diagnostic and therapy processing tools, including a combined gamma camera and CT simulation toolkit to help develop and validate new diagnostic and therapy procedures. Other research interests include understanding and correcting respiratory motion during SPECT and PET/CT imaging, the application of adaptive image filtering and automated shape analysis in neurological imaging. He has been involved in both IPEM and BIR working parties on Nuclear Medicine. Dr Guy is a State Registered Consultant Clinical Scientist and a Chartered Scientist.
Dr. Havelock is a current clinical research fellow (2010 -2013). Tom qualified as a medical doctor in 1998 with a BMedSci from Nottingham University. He is a Specialist Registrar in Respiratory and General Medicine on the Wessex rotation and currently taking time out of his clinical training programme to study for a PhD. His research is conducted with the Southampton NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit and uses CT scanning to guide regional analysis of lung physiology, inflammation, remodelling and infection in people with COPD. His other interests include pleural disease and medicine in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Sasan Mahmoodi is a lecturer in ISIS (Information: Systems, Images and Signals) research group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton. He was awarded a PhD degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in image processing and computer vision in 1998 based on his work on a novel automated method for children’s age assessment to control/avoid growth disorders by employing image processing techniques to analysis children’s hand X-rays. He has a track record in signal and image segmentation and analysis with various applications.
In 1999, Dr. Mahmoodi started his research as a research fellow in the Wellcome Trust funded research program in Newcastle University to model biological vision. In 2007, he was appointed as a lecturer in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton University.
Dr. Mahmoodi’s research has led to 35 papers in prestigious peer reviewed international journals and conferences including 17 peer reviewed journal papers. Dr. Mahmoodi has been a co-investigator of the collaborative PinView European project with Grant number 216529. Dr. Mahmoodi has reviewed several scientific papers for prestigious international journals such as IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics-part B and is currently a member of the program committee of the British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) and he sits on the executive member of British Machine Vision Association (BMVA).
Sarah is a current clinical research fellow (2012). A recent graduate of the University of Southampton, with a BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy, Sarah is responsible for the clinical trial management of some of our muco-ciliray clearance clinical studies.