Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a highly prevalent condition with poorly understood etiology. The affected population is heterogeneous and the condition multifactorial. This makes it challenging to determine the right treatment. Within the Radboud AI for Health lab, we are offering a PhD position for developing an innovative MRI-based decision support tool to help physicians and patients in choosing a treatment that is likely to be successful.
The PhD candidate will contribute to this decision support tool by developing automatic image analysis methods for assessing degenerative spinal and muscular changes on MRI scans. These image analysis methods will be based on deep learning and similar state-of-the-art technologies. Next to the development of image analysis methods, the candidate will also contribute to the validation of algorithms and decision support tool and their integration into clinical routine.
The project is a close collaboration between clinicians, including orthopedic surgeons and radiologists, and image analysis, machine learning, and clinical health scientists. The PhD candidate will work at the
Department of Orthopaedics and in the
Diagnostic Image Analysis Group (DIAG) at the Department of
Radiology and Nuclear Medicine. We are additionally collaborating in this project with the Sint Maartenskliniek, a hospital specialized in musculoskeletal disorders in which every year thousands of patients with chronic low back pain are examined and treated by the orthopedic spine surgeons.