CENTER FOR MEDICAL IMAGING STUDIES

The Centre for Medical Imaging Studies (CMIS) was established in 2019 by Prof. Birendra Biswal, who currently serves as the Lead Mentor of the center. CMIS collaborates with several renowned tertiary hospitals, including Dristi Eye Care System, Nepal (Kathmandu); Simadri Surya Eye Hospital, Nabarangpur, Odisha; the Asian Institute of Nephrology and Urology (AINU), Visakhapatnam; and the Gayatri Vidya Parishad Institute of Health Care and Medical Technology, India. These collaborations aim to develop state-of-the-art algorithms in the fields of Ophthalmic, Brain, and Prostate Imaging for the advancement and welfare of humanity.

At CMIS, Prof. Biswal serves as the Lead Mentor and Advisor, overseeing research on various radiological and bio-imaging modalities such as Fundus Imaging, Ultrasonography, Mammography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and Computed Tomography (CT). As a result of the center’s impactful work, the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) sanctioned a Core Research Grant (CRG) of ₹21,73,800 (File No. EMR/2017/000885) for a three-year project focused on developing robust algorithms for the detection of Neovascularization of the Disc (NVD) and Neovascularization Elsewhere (NVE) in Diabetic Retinopathy.

This project has led to the publication of several high-quality scholarly manuscripts in internationally reputed SCIE-indexed medical journals with commendable impact factors. In addition, CMIS has successfully organized several national workshops on Image Processing using AI techniques, funded by DST and CSIR, New Delhi, over the past five years.

At CMIS, Prof. Biswal actively mentors both B.Tech and M.Tech students, fostering a strong research culture among them. As a result of his guidance, ten B.Tech graduates have pursued M.S./M.Tech programs at prestigious institutions such as the University of California, IITs, and NITs. Furthermore, two M.Tech students have gone on to pursue Ph.D. programs in the field of Ophthalmology at reputed institutes such as the University of Auckland and IIT Delhi.

Currently, CMIS is executing another Core Research Grant (CRG) project titled “A Novel Hardware-Embedded Multivariate Feature-Enabled Health Monitoring System for Early Diagnosis of Glaucoma” funded by Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF). This project is being carried out in collaboration with Simadri Surya Eye Hospital, Nabarangpur, Odisha; IIIT Bhubaneswar; and IIT Bhubaneswar.