Dr. Bernard Chi Yuen CHIU (趙智遠)

Dr. Bernard Chi Yuen Chiu received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada, in 2001, his Master of Applied Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2003, and his Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 2008. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Vascular Imaging Laboratory at the University of Washington, Seattle, until he joined the Electronic Engineering Department at City University of Hong Kong in March 2011.

Atherosclerosis is the main cause of stroke. There is now agreement that the risk of stroke is related to slow progression, followed by sudden plaque complications, leading to plaque rupture and consequent life-threatening thrombosis. Most strokes associated with atherosclerosis, however, can be prevented by lifestyle/dietary changes, medical and surgical treatment. Therefore, the ability to monitor atherosclerotic plaque progression/regression as well as identify vulnerable plaque that is prone to rupture is important. Dr. Chiu’s research is focused on developing cost-effective, sensitive and specific plaque quantification tools based on 3D carotid ultrasound (US) images. As carotid atherosclerosis is a focal disease that predominantly occurs at the bifurcation, he has developed a tool to measure plaque thickness on a point-by-point basis, resulting in a 3D map of plaque thickness. This method has been published in Medical Physics (Publication 8). He has further developed a 2D flattened representation of the map in order to facilitate the interpretation and visualization of the 3D map. This method has been published in Medical Image Analysis (Publication 9). In an effort to identify vulnerable plaques, he has quantified carotid plaque surface irregularity using local curvature of the plaque surface segmented from 3D US images. This work has been published in Physics in Medicine and Biology (Publication 6).

As a postdoctoral fellow in University of Washington, he has made a contribution in developing a semiautomatic segmentation algorithm for MR images of femoral arteries. This work has been published in Medical Physics (Publication 2). It is also at this time that he began to work on combining MR and US images in identifying vulnerable plaque (Publication 1). MR is a well-established imaging modality for plaque composition detection. However, it is not cost-effective to use MRI for routine screening of vascular diseases. US, however, can be used for monitoring large numbers of asymptomatic patients in a large-scale clinical trial. Therefore, a patient management strategy in which US is used in screening and MR is used in validating and diagnosis of vascular diseases will have a great impact in decreasing the risk of stroke.

Editorial Review Board Member, Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, 2014-Present

Journal Editor

• Editorial Panel, EC Cardiology, 2016-Present
• Guest Associate editor, Medical Physics, 2013.

Journal Reviewer

• Computers in Biology and Medicine
• Medical Physics
• International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
• Mathematical Problems in Engineering
• Journal of Clinical Ultrasound
• Journal of Vascular Health and Risk Management
• Medical Engineering & Physics
• International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery
• IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
• Medical Image Analysis
• Stroke
• BioMedical Engineering OnLine

Other Activities

• Technical program committee member, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Communications and Computing (ICSPCC 2013).
• Chair, "Image denoising, retrieval and assessment" session, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computation and Biomedical Instrumentation (ICBMI), Wuhan, China, Dec. 15, 2011.
• Speaker, IEEE EMBS Tour of Robarts Research Institute, organized by University of Western Ontario, EMBS Student Branch, Mar. 18, 2008.
• Expert reviewer, The 10th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2007.
• Chair, “Image-guided intervention” session, 2nd Canadian Student Conference on Biomedical Computing, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Mar. 17, 2007.
• Executive committee member and reviewer, 2nd Canadian Student Conference on Biomedical Computing, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 2007.
• Expert reviewer, 1st Canadian Student Conference on Biomedical Computing, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 2006.

Scholarships and Awards

• Travel award, Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health’s (ICRH) Young Investigators Forum, May 8-10, 2008, Montreal, Quebec.
• Conference Finalists of the Michael B. Merickel Best Student Paper Awards, SPIE Medical Imaging 2008, San Diego, USA.
• Delegate, Dragon 100 Young Chinese Leaders Forum - 2007 study trip.
• Ontario Graduate Scholarships (2002-2003, 2005-2006, 2006-2007, 2007-2008)
• CIHR Strategic Training Fellows (2004-2006)
• Faculty of Engineering Entrance Fund Scholarships (University of Waterloo) (2001-2002), University of Waterloo Graduate Scholarship (2002)
• Student Peer Assistance Undergraduate Bursaries (University of Calgary) (1997, 1998, 2000)
• Talisman Energy Bursary (University of Calgary) (1997)