Monthly Archives: November 2014

In November 2014, MCLab has a new visiting scholar, Professor Chenhui Yang. Prof. Yang is Professor at School of Information Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China. We are glad to have an interview with him, talking about his previous research experiences and future expectations at USC.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and describe your previous research experience?

I come from Xiamen University (XMU), one of the ten most beautiful universities in China. Before joining XMU in 1995, I received my Bachelor and Master degrees from NUDT (National University of Defense Technology) in 1989 and 1992 respectively, and Ph.D. from Zhejiang University (ZJU). My academic research areas include intelligent multimedia technology and data mining. Specific research topics include video-audio analysis, image recognition, 3D reconstruction, 3D printing, 3D simulation, big data mining and clouding computing. I am also interested in finding computational solution to some problems from other disciplines, such as intelligent transportation and security, bioinformatics, health and medical informatics, smart city, and computational sociology, etc. I also co-founded two start-ups. Though I did not succeed in entrepreneurship, I still have a strong ambition to invent something helpful in the future.

2. What is your first impression of USC and MCLab?

USC is very large and deeply internationalized, considering the diversity of students, faculties, architecture styles and campus culture. What I love most is the interdisciplinary programs and groups. Professor Kuo and the MCLab are world widely famous. I was surprised that MCLab manages to keep thriving while some other academic groups are shrinking in such a tide of financial crisis. Prof. Kuo is one of the best professors I know, who has creative ideas, lasting passion, rich experiences and deep love to his students. All MCLab members are very bright, enthusiastic, [...]

MCL director Prof. C. -C. Jay Kuo is collaborating with CERL director Prof. Tzung Hsiai and CGC director Dr. Neil Chi to study how genetic programming is associated with congenital heart disease. They will study the heart development of the embryos of live zebrafish. The embryos of live zebrafish had Gata1a morpholino oligonucleotides (MO) micro-injection reduced erythropoiesis, which reduced viscosity by 70%. CERL research associate Dr. Peng Fei used single plane illumination microscopy (SPIM) technique to scan 1000 x-y frames in each plane from the top end of the zebrafish heart to the bottom end. MCL PhD student Hao Xu developed period determination, synchronization, and alignment algorithm to reconstruct 4-dimentional model (3-dimentional model over time) based on SPIM captured image sequences. CERL PhD candidate Juhyun Lee will use Amira to compute wall boundary conditions of the 4-dimentional model and introduce 3-dimentional Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate wall shear stress (WSS). The initial results have been published in BMES [1].

MCL is glad that its advanced image processing algorithm development capacity can be used to assist cardiovascular research. MCL will continue provide useful image processing tools that works in various areas of research.

[1]. Juhyun Lee, Peng Fei, Hao Xu, Chih-ming Ho, C.-C. Jay Kuo, Neil Chi and Tzung Hsiai, “Linking between cardiac trabeculation development and wall shear stress with 4-dimenstional single plane illumination microscopy,” Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) annual meeting, San Antonio, Texas, USA, October 22-25, 2014.