Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Optical tomography and topography devices to study (patho)physiology and mechanics of the ear." "Joris Dirckx" "Biophysics and Biomedical Physics" "Many aspects of the mechanics and physiology of the hearing organ are still to be elucidated. I want to contribute to this field by accurately measuring the shape and behavior of the eardrum, determine its elasticity and mechanical parameters, and measure its thickness distribution over the entire surface for different animal species. Furthermore, the exact shape and location of soft tissue (muscle tendon & ligaments) in the middle ear is not yet known, and the internal hollow structures of hearing bones are not yet mapped. By using, further developing, and even inventing, new dedicated optical measurement techniques, I will obtain the required data which will be incorporated into realistic finite-element models and simulations of the ear (for better understanding of middle ear mechanics and prosthesis development)." "UZA-Live birth after additional tubal flushing with oil-based contrast versus no additional flushing: a randomised, multicentre, pragmatic trial in infertile women with at least one patent tube at Hysterosalpingo-foam sonography (HYFOIL)." "Diane De Neubourg" "Antwerp Surgical Training, Anatomy and Research Centre (ASTARC)" "Live birth after additional tubal flushing with oil-based contrast versus no additional flushing: a randomised, multicentre, parallel group pragmatic trial in infertile women with at least one patent tube at Hysterosalpingo-foam sonography (HYFOIL study).Ten to 15 percent of couples in their reproductive lifetime face fertility problems which is defined by WHO as the absence of pregnancy after minimal 12 months of unprotected sexual intercourse. The three most frequent causes of subfertility are: sperm defects, ovulation disorders and tubal pathology. In order to exclude tubal pathology, tubal patency tests are performed under ultrasound guidance with foam (hysterosalpingo-foam sonography (Hyfosy)) or with contrast/water (hysterosalpingo-contrast sonography (Hycosy)). This trial will investigate whether tubal flushing with an oil-soluble contrast medium (OSCM) can increase the likelihood of a spontaneous conception after tubal patency testing with Hyfosy under ultrasound guidance compared to no additional flushing in a population of infertile women between 18 and 40 years of age with absence of pregnancy after 12 months of unprotected sexual intercourse or who have three cycles of donor insemination without pregnancy or three ovulatory ovulation induction cycles without pregnancy. The use of Lipiodol Ultra Fluide® is off-label in Hyfosy.This multicenter, randomised, open-label, comparative and pragmatic trial compares 2 arms which will be randomised 1:1:- Intervention group: Tubal flush with 5-10mL oil-soluble contrast medium (Lipiodol Ultra Fluide®, Guerbet, France) immediately after Hyfosy- Control group: No additional intervention after HyfosyThe study comprises a screening period of maximum 8 weeks (w-8 to d1), randomisation (w-8 to d1), a start study visit at which the Hyfosy is performed (d1) and a fertility treatment period of 6 months (d1-w26). If the woman is not pregnant at 6 months after Hyfosy, the follow-up will last till 12 months (w52). If the participant is pregnant at 6 months after Hyfosy, the follow-up will last till maximal 4 months after live birth or miscarriage.The primary endpoint is the occurrence of live birth, with the first day of the last menstrual cycle in which the patient conceives within 6 months after Hyfosy. Secondary endpoints consist of reproductive outcomes, gestational age at delivery, birth weight, neonatal mortality, major congenital anomaly, neonatal outcomes and thyroid function, pregnancy complications, number of complications during or immediately after the intervention, pain score of the Hyfosy and additional flush, thyroid function of the mother, general and disease-specific quality of life." "Morphological Uterus Sonographic Assessment (MUSA) project: Preoperative diagnosis of myometrial lesions using imaging (MUSA-1) and liquid biopsies (trans-MUSA)." "Thierry Van den Bosch" "Woman and Child" "Malignant myometrial lesions or sarcomas are highly aggressive and require radical surgery in an oncological centre. It is of utmost importance to accurately identify sarcomas, not only because any delay in diagnosis is associated with lower survival rates, but also because the inadvertent morcellation of a sarcoma may lead to diffuse intraabdominal spreading of malignant tissue and hence to a dramatic worsening of the patient’s prognosis. Our research group has ample experience in gynecological ultrasound as well as liquid biopsy research. The knowledge about sonographic and liquid biopsy biomarkers in malignant myometrial disease is low. Our research aims to define sonographic features and to identify new liquid biopsy biomarkers that enable to differentiate a sarcoma from a myoma." "The sonographic assessment of labor progress, fetal wellbeing and the pelvic floor in the context of childbirth: developing new applications to improve labor outcome and identify high-risk patients for related morbidities." "Jute Richter" "Woman and Child, Urogenital, Abdominal and Plastic Surgery" "For ages, the assessment of labor progress and pelvic floor injury related to childbirth, has been based merely on clinical skills. Over the last decades, it has been well established that a vaginal examination to assess cervical dilatation, fetal position and descent during labor, is not accurate, poorly reproducible and often considered uncomfortable for the patient. Evaluation of pelvic floor damage after childbirth, is based on the same clinical principles of inspection and palpation (vaginal and/or rectal examination). Often, lesions with the most serious implications are either missed (Obstetric Anal Sphincter Injury, OASI) or not evaluated at all (avulsion of the Levator Ani Muscle). Both have the potential to have a significant negative impact on the patients quality of life in later stages, because of their association with fecal incontinence (OASI) and pelvic organ prolapse (Levator Ani Avulsion). There is a growing body of evidence that ultrasound allows for a more objective evaluation of labor progress and the pelvic floor after childbirth, in addition to our current clinical practice. Our project will focus on the development of new strategies for education and implementation of these techniques, in order to identify patients at high risk for a complicated labor/delivery and related morbidities." "BOF Sabbatical Leave - Kathleen Gyssels. two monographs about L.-G. Damas. 'a ti pa': vers une France décoloniale avec l'antillectuel L. G. Damas, Brill), and collection of poetry Mine de riens (2012), forthcoming 2022, with Ed. Passage(s)." "Kathleen Gyssels" "Institute of Jewish Studies" "1. A first monograph will be finished in the form of an intellectual biography of Leon Damas. It will contextualize the poet and politician in the Negritude movement and in the broader field of postcolonial writing by prominent poets from African and the Caribbean. Neglected, Damas will here be rehabilitated as a forerunner of many emancipatory movements. 2. The Second monograph is an essay on the posthumous published collection of poetry by the same Leon Damas, Dernière escale (2012). it forms the second tome of my close reading of his earlier collection Black-Label (1956). Ed. passage(s) will launch the book at the end of 2018 or Spring 2019 (by the end of my sabbatical).3. Meanwhile, I start a third new project on ""dark tourism"" in the Caribbean, on heritage tourism and new ""memorials"" in the Caribbean and the Guianas: given the poor and even misrepresentation of local heroes and other minorities in the West Indies, my book will shed light on important gaps and how some (of the best) metafictional narratives fill in this void (Padura, Dalembert for the Jewish presence in the archipelago, for instance)." "Update 2008 EMCDDA Insights monograph “Drug use, impaired driving and traffic accidents”" "Alain Verstraete" "Department of Clinical chemistry, microbiology and immunology, European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction" "Update of the monograph on 'Drugs, impaired driving and traffic accidents ', originally written in 2008. Addition of the most recent experimental and epidemiological studies and meta-analyses about driving under the influence of drugs." "Finishing monograph ""Modality in Mind." "Jan Nuyts" "Grammar and Pragmatics" "This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university." "Imaging intact human lungs with local resolution of cellular structures using hierarchical phase-contrast tomography" "Stijn Verleden" "Antwerp Surgical Training, Anatomy and Research Centre (ASTARC)" "Hierarchical Phase-Contract Tomography (HiP-CT) has been developed as an innovative way to study an intact human organ in 3D resolution on a near-microscopic scale. Within this project we want to leverage HiP-CT to investigate human lungs from patients with COPD and lung fibrosis. We aim to identify and quantify disease specific features and unravel the role of the vasculature in the pathophysiology of chronic lung diseases. HiP-CT will provide us with the advantage of comparing disease specific features across the entire organ (and thereby allow us to compare none vs mild vs severely affected tissue with the same lung) and quantify this in 3 dimensions which is not possible with any of the existing technologies. Using this highly detailed information we will segment and quantify the entire bronchial and vascular system and compare this in health and disease. We next want to leverage this knowledge to also obtain deeper biologic information by performing spatial analysis in the same organs using multiplex immunofluorescence and spatial transcriptomics. Lastly, we want to validate our findings in a larger collection of organs, as well as organs or biopsies with early disease from our own biorepository to validate the importance of our findings. We are convinced that by combining state-of-the-art imaging technology with next generation biological tools, we will get one step closer in our understanding of chronic lung diseases which is desperately needed given their poor outcome." "Hierarchical phase-contrast tomography as a novel tool to image intact lungs." "Stijn Verleden" "Antwerp Surgical Training, Anatomy and Research Centre (ASTARC)" "Visualisation of intact organs with microscopic resolution can learn us a lot about the morphological and molecular changes in health and disease. Specifically for the lung, we do not have sufficient insights about the changes that are associated with chronic lung disease. Therefore within this project, we want to leverage unique methodology (hierarchic phase contrast tomography) to image the complete lung at a microscopic resolution. We aim to better understand the changes associated with disease. Unique with this technology is that the vasculature can also be directly visualised. Therefore we want to utilize this tool to better understand what happens with the airways, the vasculature, the alveoli, the pleura and most interestingly how these interact. We also aim to associate our findings with the in vivo pre-operative omaging, but also to the pathological diagnosis. These insights will be crucial to better understand the mechanisms of chronic lung diseases." "Advanced dynamic computer-generated holography for high-end holographic visualization" "David Blinder" "Multidimensional signal processing and communication, Electronics and Informatics" "Traditional display devices can only show planar images, even though the world around us is threedimensional (3D). Since our visual system can perceive depth, its ability to understand the complexity of 3D objects and environments will be limited to traditional displays. That is why multiple 3D display technologies have been devised targeting to solve this limitation. Examples include stereoscopic displays, light-field displays, and volumetric displays. However, these systems can only partially account for the cues of the human visual system, lowering the quality of experience and even causing discomfort after prolonged usage. Holographic display technology does not suffer these shortcomings, making it the ultimate display technology. These displays must be fed a digital interference pattern encoding the 3D scene. This can be achieved with Computer Generated Holography (CGH), i.e., algorithms that simulate numerical diffraction to compute digital holograms. However, CGH faces many computational challenges: (1) every 3D scene point can affect every pixel of the hologram due to the nature of diffraction, (2) highend holographic displays can reach resolutions of 100 Gigapixel and (3) the display has to be updated many times per second for dynamic scenes. This research proposal aims to tackle this challenge by developing dynamic CGH techniques to generate high-end holographic video content efficiently"