Lab Links

The PULSE Lab, directed by Dr. Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell, integrates light, sound, and robots to develop innovative biomedical imaging systems that simultaneously address unmet clinical needs and improve patient care. Our emphasis is diagnostic and surgical ultrasound and photoacoustic technologies, with applications in neurosurgery, cancer detection and treatment, and women’s health. We maintain a constant eye toward interfacing our technologies with real patients to facilitate clinical translation. The PULSE Lab is affiliated with the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare, and the Carnegie Center for Surgical Innovation, with dedicated laboratory space at both the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus and the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Medicine.

The MUSiiC research lab, headed by Dr. Emad Boctor, develops innovative ultrasound technologies for medical applications ranging from prostate and breast cancer treatment to liver ablation and brachytherapy, among others. The group is based on a collaboration among researchers from Johns Hopkins Medical School, Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, and partners from other academic institutions and industry.

The Haptics and Medical Robotics (HAMR) Laboratory seeks to extend the current knowledge surrounding the human perception of touch, especially as it relates to applications of human/robot interaction and collaboration. We are particularly interested in medical robotics applications such as minimally invasive surgical robots, upper-limb prosthetic devices, and rehabilitation robots. To solve many of the problems in these areas, we apply techniques from human perception, human motor control, neuromechanics, and control theory.

The LIMBS laboratory, directed by Noah J. Cowan, strives to uncover principles of animal and robot sensory guidance. For animals this is an analysis problem: we reverse engineer the biomechanical and neural control principles underlying animal movement. For robotics, this is a design problem: we incorporate biological inspiration and engineering insights to synthesize new approaches to robot control. This research program includes several projects in robot and animal (including human) sensing, navigation, and control.

The Computational Interaction and Robotics Laboratory, directed by Dr. Gregory Hager, is devoted to the study of problems that involve dynamic, spatial interaction at the intersection of imaging, robotics, and human-computer interaction. The laboratory has a number of ongoing projects in this area. The Language of Motion project is seeking to develop new methods to recognize and evaluate skilled human manipulation, with a particular emphasis on surgery. Data is collected using a da Vinci Surgical robot, and processed into gesture-based models that support skill evaluation, training, and human-robot collaborative task execution. The Manipulating and Perceiving Simultaneously (MAPS) project seeks to apply principles of computer vision to tactile sensing, with the goal of developing new methods for haptic object recognition. The lab’s most recent work aims to develop Generic Perception to support general-purposes manipulation of objects in the physical world. The laboratory also works in the area of medical imaging. Interactive computer-aided diagnostic systems based on images are also an area of interest.

The Intuitive Computing Laboratory seeks to innovate interactive robot systems to provide physical, social, and behavioral support personalized to people with various characteristics and needs. We are an interdisciplinary team that designs, builds, and studies intuitive interaction capabilities of robotic systems to improve their utilities and user experience. We draw on principles and techniques from human-computer interaction, robotics, and machine learning in our research and are interested in using our systems to address problems in the fields of health care, education, and collaborative manufacturing.

The Advanced Medical Instrumentation and Robotics Research Laboratory (AMIRo), directed by Dr. Iulian Iordachita, conducts research to aid and support the robotic assisted medical technology encompassing medical diagnosis and therapy, and clinical research. The main goal is to create the future medical robots and devices that will help clinicians to deliver earlier diagnosis and less invasive treatments at lower cost and in shorter time. Application areas include robot-assisted microsurgery, MRI-compatible mechatronic systems, image-guided procedures, optical fiber-based force and shape sensing, and small animal research platforms.

Dr. Ralph Etienne-Cummings directs the CSMS lab. The lab’s current research includes various experiments to understand neurophysiology of spinal neural circuits, to interface with them, to decode their sensory-motor relationships, and to use these relationships to control biomorphic robots. The lab is developing brain-like computational systems to mimic the object detection, recognition, and tracking found in humans and primates. The plan is to continue to expand this area of research, while leveraging the laboratory’s expertise in VLSI circuits and systems, visual and acoustical information processing, neuromorphic computation systems and biomorphic robotics.

The Networked and Spatially Distributed Systems (NSDS) group directed by Dr. Dennice Gayme, is concerned with characterizing, predicting, and controlling spatially distributed and networked systems in order to ensure stability and manage disturbances, while also optimizing efficiency and performance. These systems are typically represented as dynamical systems interacting over a graph (e.g. transportation, communication or power networks) or as partial differential equations (e.g. wind farms, wall-turbulence and power system oscillations). We develop theory and computational approaches for applications that lie at the interdisciplinary intersections of dynamical systems, controls and fluid mechanics, e.g. coordinated control of wind farms and grid integration of renewable energy.

The Image Analysis and Communications Lab (IACL) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University is led by Professor Jerry Prince. Research focuses on image and signal processing in medical imaging and video processing. Specific areas of technical interest include filter banks, wavelets, multivariate systems, signal decomposition, time-frequency and time-scale analysis, active contours and deformable geometry, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and optical flow.

Urology Robotics is a research and education program dedicated to advance the technology used in Urology. The main focus of the lab is in the development of robots for real-time Image-Guided Interventions. The application range of the lab technologies extends to other medical specialties and industry. The program is based on a multidisciplinary integrated team of students, engineers, and clinicians working in partnership from the bench to the bedside. The lab is specialized in the development of surgical robotic systems and especially in robotics for image-guided intervention (IGI). Besides Urology, the instruments and systems created in the lab apply to a larger area of medical fields, such as Interventional Radiology. The lab is part of the Brady Urological Institute (Urology Department at the Johns Hopkins Medicine) and is located at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.