Location: Dijon - France

Duration: 6 months (negotiable)

Start Date: from January 2025 to March 2025

Supervisor:

Yannick Benezeth (Professor, IMVIA)

Project Description:

Chronic wounds present a significant challenge to healthcare systems worldwide. Their effective monitoring is crucial for optimizing treatment and improving patient outcomes. The French ANR Wound-rPPG project aims to develop a novel, non-invasive, method for monitoring wound healing.

This internship focuses on numerical modeling and simulation of the interaction of light with the skin. You will contribute to building a voxel-based Monte Carlo (MC) simulation model that captures the complexities of light propagation through different skin layers. We will use the voxel-based MC simulation framework with 3D geometric models of the skin and vascular distribution models to realistically capture the complexity of light-tissue interactions in the skin. We will build on the existing work (e.g., [Gar12]) to simulate images. We will also incorporate temporal variations due to different phases of the cardiac cycle, as proposed by [Fin22]. The simulations will be conducted for multiple skin layers in the visible and near-infrared light spectrum.

[Gar12] Gareau et al., Inhomogeneous Monte Carlo simulations of dermoscopic spectroscopy, Imaging, Manipulation, and Analysis of Biomolecules, Cells, and Tissues, 2012.

[Fin22] Fine et al., A Computational Modeling and Simulation Workflow to Investigate the Impact of Patient-Specific and Device Factors on Hemodynamic Measurements from Non-Invasive Photoplethysmography, Biosensors, 2022.

Responsibilities:

• Literature review of existing MC simulation models for light-tissue interaction.
• Design and implementation of a voxel-based MC simulation model.
• Utilize publicly available and experimentally acquired data to parameterize the simulation model, considering factors like skin optical properties and anatomical structures.
• Contribute to the validation of the simulation model by comparing simulated data with experimental measurements obtained from healthy and wounded skin.

Required Profile:

• Master’s degree student in Biomedical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, or a related field with a strong background in numerical modeling and simulation.
• Familiarity with Monte Carlo simulation methods is highly desirable.
• Experience with programming languages such as MATLAB or Python is required.

Potential opportunity to extend the internship into a fully funded PhD thesis.

To Apply:

Interested candidates are encouraged to submit their applications, including a CV, a motivation letter and recent transcript to:

Yannick Benezeth: yannick.benezeth@u-bourgogne.fr