The Signal and Image Processing Center is making research on the early detection of diseases
It seeks to develop methods for cardiovascular disease prevention and treatments against cancer, among other pathologies.
The Signal and Image Processing Center (CPSI in Spanish), created by UTN Buenos Aires to support the Phd in Engineering with a specialization in Signal and Image Processing, is seeking, through research, to make contributions to medicine to improve disease prevention and early detection.
“We are also dedicated to processing environmental data and a big volume of data in general. This is complemented with image processing study and advanced techniques. In brief, it can be said that CPSI is developing and implementing lines of research that are at the frontier of present scientific and technological knowledge,” stated Dr Walter Legnani, Director of the Signal and Image Processing Center.
Twenty researchers and ten scholarship holders from diverse undergraduate degrees work at CPSI. Due to the reforms carried out in the Medrano premises, the Center has its own place, which promotes the growth of the area.
The diverse lines of research of the Center are related to Bioengineering aimed at developing techniques to calculate cardiovascular risk. Thus, early and precise detection is carried out by means of indicators regularly used at an international level. In silico tumor models are also being developed. “This implies growing a tumor in a computer to simulate diverse treatment techniques,” Dr. Walter Legnani, CPSI Director, explained.
The Center is also working on the design of images at an industrial level to produce objects. “A 3D object is not produced in this way. Sometimes it’s all made up of plastic inserts. For example, bottles are made in a smaller size and then, they are blown up. Something similar occurs with garden chairs and tables,” Legnani described.
“We also have, he added, lines of observation of high energy electrons in a project involving more than 80 countries. In addition, they have co-joint projects with the Comisión de Energía Atómica (Atomic Energy Commission) and stochastic signal processing. Another group is dedicated to data modeling and processing by means of statistical techniques.”
Research faculty, who teach in undergraduate degree courses develop their research activities in the Center: “both undergraduate degree Signals Chairs have their office in the CPSI, that is, The Electric and the Electronics Engineering Departments.”
On the other hand, the Center offers courses and seminars for the Phd program and other graduate degree programs requiring them. Seminars have national and international validity because they are offered in the context of co-joint PhD programs in universities with whom there are scientific cooperation agreements.
Among those universities are Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain; Universidad de la República, Uruguay; Institut Jean le Rond D’Alembert, Sorbonne Universites, France; University of Paris 7, Diderot, France; Université de Versailles, France; and Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina.
CPSI
It was created in 2005 with the aim to provide support to the PhD in Engineering with a Specialization in Signal and Image Processing through a cooperation network with internationally recognized institutions; the teaching of PhD courses and students’ internships; the training of human resources in research activities, technological development, technology transfer and teaching.
Among the most outstanding projects are: “Study and Simulation of non-linear Dynamic systems: chaos and fractals”, “Modeling, simulation and signal processing (PhD education)”.
The research on image processing is framed within the area of graphic computing and seeks to find out how to work with two-dimensional information or images. It employs different images such as synthetic aperture radar images for environmental census, and the detection of deforestation, wetlands, population growth, and oil spill, among others.
In addition, the Center works with medical images – through an agreement with the Pediatrics Hospital Prof. Dr. Juan P. Garrahan and the Instituto Leloir Foundation to study neuroblastoma cell growth.
Another research group in the Center deals with the area of pattern recognition and data mining.
“These research activities have international recognition and a high level of transfer to the socioproductive environment,” highligthed Legnani.
