Michael Miga, Harvie Branscomb Professor at Vanderbilt and professor of biomedical engineering, has been named a Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for achievements in technology guided surgery and computational modeling for therapeutic and imaging applications.
SPIE will honor 57 new Fellows of the Society for 2021. Fellows are SPIE members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement and for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE.
Miga is a pioneer in sparse-data-driven image-to-physical non-rigid registration within the context of a soft-tissue image-guided surgery. He also uses quantitative, biomarker image-data-driven forecasting of biotransport models in tumor growth and thermal energy deposition to harness phenotypic presentation of disease for improving therapy application and potentially outcome.
The common thread tying his work together is the concept of biophysical models serving as a constraining scaffold for sparse therapeutic and surgical/interventional data that, when of sufficient strength, enable a functional purpose greater than the sum of contributing data.
Miga also is a professor of radiology and radiological sciences, neurological surgery, and otolaryngology-head and neck surgery, and co-founder of the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering. He was a co-inventor of the first FDA cleared image-guided liver surgery system. In partnership with VISE, he will direct the school’s new engineering graduate program in surgery and intervention that launches in fall 2021.
“Working within the SPIE community over the last 20 years has been such a wonderful experience. I am deeply honored to have been named as a SPIE Fellow and greatly appreciate the recognition. I also would thank all of my colleagues past and present at Vanderbilt, another community whose support I have been thankful and without it, this honor would not have been possible,” Miga said.
He is director of the Biomedical Modeling Laboratory and has been PI on several NIH grants concerned with image-guided brain, liver, kidney, and breast surgery. He is also involved in a model-based image-data-driven approach that would allow for patient-specific ‘tuning’ of thermal therapies to enable precise localization and the accurate forecasting of dose extent.
Miga is PI and director of a novel NIH T32 pre-doctoral training program, “Training Program for Innovative Engineering Research in Surgery and Intervention,” that is a clinical immersion approach focused on the creation of translational technologies for treatment and discovery in surgery and intervention.
He served as a charter member of the Biomedical Imaging Technology (BMIT-B) Study Section of the Center for Scientific Review at NIH from 2010-2014, and is currently serving on the Bioengineering, Technology, and Surgical Sciences (BTSS) Study Section as a charter member. Miga is an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Medical Imaging.
Miga joined the faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University in 2001. He received a B.S. and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island. He received a Ph.D. from Dartmouth College specializing in biomedical engineering.
Contact: Brenda Ellis, 615 343-6314
brenda.ellis@vanderbilt.edu