Report on the 3rd VPH study group on VPH Toolkit
The third VPH NoE study group (SG3) was held in Barcelona in May 2012. The event, organised by the University of Sheffield, Super Computing Solutions, Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, took place at UPF premises the week after the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2012).
Following the success of previous study groups organised by the VPH NoE Consortium, the format of SG3 was kept quite similar to that of SG1 and SG2. The organisers invited three groups of world- recognised experts, typically leading large VPH Projects, to submit a proposal for a grand challenge in the area of musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, and oncology research. The organisers requested that these grand challenges would identify each a challenging modelling workflow, a minimum list of “essential” tools known to be necessary, and a list of European research groups that are known to be active in research topics that could benefit from the complete realisation of such workflow.
- Norbert Graf, USAAR Saarland, coordinator of the P-medicine project, and Georgios Stamatakos, ICCS Athens, coordinator of the Oncosimulator Project proposed “Multiscale cancer models and oncosimulators for clinical use”;
- Markus Heller, Charité Berlin, coordinator of the MXL Project, and Damien Lacroix, IBEC Barcelona, coordinator of the MYSPINE project proposed “Multiscale models of the skeleton for clinical use”;
- Nejib Zemzemi, National Institute for Reasearch in Computer Science and Control (INRIA-Bordeaux), Pablo Lamata, Kings College London/University of Oxford and Mariano Vazquez, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre proposed “Multiscale multiphysics modelling and simulation of the cardiovascular system”.
For each challenge a workgroup was formed, composed by the experts who proposed the challenge, expert developers of software tools identified relevant for that challenge, and by young researchers (PhD students and post-docs) who are conducting research in directions that would take clear advantage by the full realisation of the workflow defined by the challenge.
The first day the three keynote speakers presented each challenge during a plenary session, so as to promote cross-fertilisation between the three research areas. An additional plenary lecture was given given in the following days. From the afternoon of the first day to the end of the forth day the three workgroups collaborated to the development of the three workflows, and to their applications to the specific research problems of each participant. The fifth day the three workgroups met again in plenary session, to wrap-up the results of the study group, again with cross-fertilisation intent.
To read the full report and see the final presentations please click here