The department of Neurosurgery offers a position as from October as PhD student medical image analysis, 36 hours a week

Your Challenge
You contribute to research that is part of the programme “A personalized care path for brain tumor patients”. As a PhD student you focus on the prediction of tumor progression of vestibular schwannoma’s, before and after treatment with stereotactic radiosurgery.

• You perform scientific research in the domains of advanced analysis of MRI images of vestibular schwannoma’s.
• You work with partners to improve the knowledge on MRI-related tumor features and their role to predict tumor progression.
• You develop software that wil help the patient and the doctor to choose the optimal treatment.
• You present the results of the study in clear, unambiguous reports.
• You play an active role in all activities of the research team and collaborate with team members.
• You publish results in scientific journals.
• You present results at (international) conferences.

Your Professional Environment
You will be part of the research group of the department of Neurosurgery, which participates in the programme Highly Specialised Care & Research programme 2020-2024, funded by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development). 
The aim of this programme is to create a more personalized care path for brain tumor patients before, during and after (radio-)surgical treatment. To improve shared clinical decision making, more extensive and accurate information will be collected, and models will be developed to better predict oncological or functional outcomes after (radio)surgical treatment. 
Our programme has two overarching themes: Neuroimaging  (eg, fMRI, DTI) and Cognition. It includes six research projects that are strongly interrelated and whereby 6 PhD candicates will jointly focus on the prediction of the outcome after treatment, each from a different perspective. Main partners are Tilburg University and Technical University Eindhoven. In addition we are collaborating with several other national and international Universities and University Medical Centers.

Your Project
The project you will be working on focuses on a benign brain tumor, called vestibular schwannoma. In practice, these tumors are treated only after growth is observed on sequential MRI’s. Currently, we are unable to predict this potential growth. Therefore, multiple MRI’s are necessary to monitor the behavior of the tumor. If the tumor needs to be treated, we have a strong preference to use a high precision irradiation with the Gamma Knife. Not all tumors react in a positive way. At the moment, we are unable to predict which tumors will, or will not, react positively on the treatment. The appearance on the MRI differ significantly between these tumors. The goal of this research project is to characterize these differences between tumors on the MRI with advanced image analysis (radiomics). With the use of such MRI-based data in a machine learning environment, we hope to improve the prediction of tumor progression, both before and after treatment. Improvement of prediction can lead to a clinical decision support tool, which can aid the patients and doctors to choose the optimal treatment option.

This PhD position will be jointly supervised by Dr J. Verheul, neurosurgeon at the ETZ hospital and P. Langenhuizen and Prof P. de With, both from the video coding and architectures group, Dept of electrical engineering at the University of Technology Eindhoven. Furthermore, there is an intensive collaboration with Prof D. Kunst at Radboud UMC Nijmegen. Collaboration is also with two centers abroad: Haukeland University Hospital Bergen, Noorwegen and Lausanne University Hospital, Zwitserland.

You have a (research) Master’s degree in a relevant area such as Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or signal processing.

• You have interest and/or experience with the science of medical image analysis.
• You have interest and experience with collection and analysis of image data.
• You possess strong programming skills in Matlab, and/or Python.
• You have excellent analytical skills and are highly rigorous.
• You have good technical understanding of (or ability to learn) advanced statistics and quantitative methods.
• You are a fast learner, autonomous and creative.
• You are highly motivated, work hard and show dedication.
• You possess good communication skills and are able to work with different people.
• You are fluent in English, both spoken and written.

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

The PhD candidate will be employed at Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital. We offer:

• A full-time (36 hours) agreement for 4 years with a trial period of 2 months.
• Opportunities for additional education, deepening and broadening. Working at ETZ means working in an environment where development and vitality is stimulated. 
• Salary according to function grouping in FWG 50 with a maximum gross salary, dependent on education and experience, of € 3.664,- on a fulltime basis of 36 hours per week. 
• A broad package of attractive fringe benefits including an annual holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%; travel compensation, optional system of additional terms of employment with among others an extensive bike plan.

ETZ (Elisabeth-TweeSteden Ziekenhuis)

Het ETZ (Elisabeth-TweeSteden Ziekenhuis) is een topklinisch opleidingsziekenhuis en traumacentrum. Met drie locaties in Tilburg en Waalwijk is ETZ hét ziekenhuis voor alle inwoners van de regio Midden-Brabant, maar ook (ver) daarbuiten.