The aim of this project is to develop a computer generated virtual environment (VE) with variable virtual anatomy, in which the appearance, 'feel' and human factors of invasive radiological procedures (interventional radiology, IR) in patients can be reproduced and assessed.IR is keyhole surgery using needles, specialised wires and tubes (catheters), guided by touch and imaging (x-ray, 'Cat Scan'--CT, ultrasound). IR benefits from local anaesthesia, a tiny incision, few complications, reduced postoperative pain, short hospital stay and low cost. Most IR procedures commence with needle puncture of a blood vessel to insert guide wires and catheters: these clinical skills are acquired by all radiologists during training, as an apprenticeship in patients, inevitably associated with some discomfort and occasionally, complications. 'Straightforward' cases for diagnosis are ideal for training but are being replaced by state-of-the-art, non-invasive imaging methods. While some skills (mainly visual skills, relating to orientation and spatial negotiation) can be acquired using models (as in surgery), these have limitations for IR which relies heavily on a sense of touch. Both patients and trainees would benefit from the use of computers to create a VE with devices conveying touch sensation (haptics) to realistically mimic procedures on patients. Removal of this initial experience from the clinical environment would be time efficient while improving patient safety and reducing the time taken for medical trainees to attain and maintain higher levels of competence.The key aims of this project are to:1. develop and validate a complete VE for training in vascular interventional radiology, encompassing needle puncture as well as guidewire and catheter insertion and manipulation. This is the overarching objective of this project and will be based on a task analysis of interventional procedures.2. develop methods of semi-automatically processing medical imaging data to create a variable range of 3D geometry of anatomy.3. determine and localise the forces experienced by an operator during IR procedures in patients using miniature sensors, enabling the 'feel' of a real procedure to be accurately reproduced.4. simulate needle puncture, and introduction of a guidewire and catheter into a blood vessel, with realistic behaviour of tissue and vessels.5. reproduce the feel of a pulse to guide instrumentation of an artery using a novel device which mimics a patient's physiological pulse.6. simulate ultrasound to guide needle puncture of an artery, and fluoroscopy to guide guidewire and catheter manipulation within an artery.7. validate the VE and assess its potential for training and certification. We will also make suggestions for inclusion in curricula and criteria for certification.The VE developed in this project will be generic, capable of incorporation into an existing system, or of forming the basis of a new generation of systems applicable to training. The work will be undertaken by researchers at the Universities of Liverpool, Bangor, Hull, Leeds and Imperial; the PI (Gould) is an interventional radiologist with extensive clinical research experience and who will be the overall project co-ordinator. The technical project manager is a Computer Science professor (John) whose Research Assistant will also assist in project management. This proposal accords with the aims of EPSRC in introducing improvements in health and will also enhance economic development and stimulate interest in the sciences.

The aim of this project is to develop a computer generated virtual environment (VE) with variable virtual anatomy, in which the appearance, 'feel' and human factors of invasive radiological procedures (interventional radiology, IR) in patients can be reproduced and assessed.IR is keyhole surgery using needles, specialised wires and tubes (catheters), guided by touch and imaging (x-ray, 'Cat Scan'--CT, ultrasound). IR benefits from local anaesthesia, a tiny incision, few complications, reduced postoperative pain, short hospital stay and low cost. Most IR procedures commence with needle puncture of a blood vessel to insert guide wires and catheters: these clinical skills are acquired by all radiologists during training, as an apprenticeship in patients, inevitably associated with some discomfort and occasionally, complications. 'Straightforward' cases for diagnosis are ideal for training but are being replaced by state-of-the-art, non-invasive imaging methods. While some skills (mainly visual skills, relating to orientation and spatial negotiation) can be acquired using models (as in surgery), these have limitations for IR which relies heavily on a sense of touch. Both patients and trainees would benefit from the use of computers to create a VE with devices conveying touch sensation (haptics) to realistically mimic procedures on patients. Removal of this initial experience from the clinical environment would be time efficient while improving patient safety and reducing the time taken for medical trainees to attain and maintain higher levels of competence.The key aims of this project are to:1. develop and validate a complete VE for training in vascular interventional radiology, encompassing needle puncture as well as guidewire and catheter insertion and manipulation. This is the overarching objective of this project and will be based on a task analysis of interventional procedures.2. develop methods of semi-automatically processing medical imaging data to create a variable range of 3D geometry of anatomy.3. determine and localise the forces experienced by an operator during IR procedures in patients using miniature sensors, enabling the 'feel' of a real procedure to be accurately reproduced.4. simulate needle puncture, and introduction of a guidewire and catheter into a blood vessel, with realistic behaviour of tissue and vessels.5. reproduce the feel of a pulse to guide instrumentation of an artery using a novel device which mimics a patient's physiological pulse.6. simulate ultrasound to guide needle puncture of an artery, and fluoroscopy to guide guidewire and catheter manipulation within an artery.7. validate the VE and assess its potential for training and certification. We will also make suggestions for inclusion in curricula and criteria for certification.The VE developed in this project will be generic, capable of incorporation into an existing system, or of forming the basis of a new generation of systems applicable to training. The work will be undertaken by researchers at the Universities of Liverpool, Bangor, Hull, Leeds and Imperial; the PI (Gould) is an interventional radiologist with extensive clinical research experience and who will be the overall project co-ordinator. The technical project manager is a Computer Science professor (John) whose Research Assistant will also assist in project management. This proposal accords with the aims of EPSRC in introducing improvements in health and will also enhance economic development and stimulate interest in the sciences.

It is widely acknowledged that the water and wastewater infrastructure assets, which communities rely upon for health, economy and environmental sustainability, are severely underfunded on a global scale. For example, a funding gap of nearly $55 billion has been identified by the US EPA (ASCE, 2011). In England and Wales, the total estimated capital value of water utility assets is £254.8 billion (Ofwat, 2015), but between 2010 and 2015 only £12.9 billion was allocated for maintaining and replacing assets. Combined with the drive to reduce customers' bills, there will be even more pressure on water companies to find ways to bridge the gap between the available and required finances. As a result of this it is not surprising that optimisation methods have been extensively researched and applied in this area (Maier et al., 2014). The inability of those methods to include into optimisation 'unquantifiable' or difficult to quantify, yet important considerations, such as user subjective domain knowledge, has contributed to the limited adoption of optimisation in the water industry. Many cognitive and computational challenges accompany the design, planning and management involving complex engineered systems. Water industry infrastructure assets (i.e., water distribution and wastewater networks) are examples of systems that pose severe difficulties to completely automated optimisation methods due to their size, conceptual and computational complexity, non-linear behaviour and often discrete/combinatorial nature. These difficulties have first been articulated by Goulter (1992), who primarily attributed the lack of application of optimisation in water distribution network (WDN) design to the absence of suitable professional software. Although such software is now widely available (e.g., InfoWorks, WaterGems, EPANET, etc.), the lack of user under-standing of capabilities, assumptions and limitations still restricts the use of optimisation by practicing engineers (Walski, 2001). Automatic methods that require a purely quantitative mathematical representation do not leverage human expertise and can only find solutions that are optimal with regard to an invariably over-simplified problem formulation. The focus of the past research in this area has almost exclusively been on algorithmic issues. However, this approach neglects many important human-computer interaction issues that must be addressed to provide practitioners with engineering-intuitive, practical solutions to optimisation problems. This project will develop new understanding of how engineering design, planning and management of complex water systems can be improved by creating a visual analytics optimisation approach that will integrate human expertise (through 'human in the loop' interactive optimisation), IT infrastructure (cloud/parallel computing) and state-of-the-art optimisation techniques to develop highly optimal, engineering intuitive solutions for the water industry. The new approach will be extensively tested on problems provided by the UK water industry and will involve practicing engineers and experts in this important problem domain.

Traditional geological fieldwork involves studying outcrops of rock in physical landscapes. Despite recent acceptance by many that field skills are a barrier to inclusion traditional fieldwork remains recognised as an important part of geological education and understanding, for students, professionals, and researchers. However, fieldwork in the real world can be: impossible or difficult for many with disabilities (physical, mental and emotional) inaccessible or impractical for those with caring responsibilities in isolated or remote locations that demand substantial travel and unequally exposes participants to risk expensive Virtual outcrops or field work should be able to overcome these barriers, but current virtual outcrops fail to replicate an authentic field experience, and do not take full advantage of a digital environment because they are either a passive video, a single 360 degree image, or a low-resolution 3D field area that the student can move around in. The problem with these is that although gross structure is visible, they lack the multi-scale experience essential to geological field work as zooming is possible but limited by the resolution of the original. This project will pilot the development of a true multi-scale digital landscape for field learning. Multiple overlapping photographs can be turned into a 3D version of a geological outcrop. By creating multiple versions of these at different scales it will be possible to create a single digital 3D outcrop that allows seamless zooming right into the rock face so the rock type can be identified. Integrated with high quality teaching material these outcrops can allow anyone to experience realistic fieldwork from outcrops all over the globe.

The aim of this project is to develop a computer generated virtual environment (VE) with variable virtual anatomy, in which the appearance, 'feel' and human factors of invasive radiological procedures (interventional radiology, IR) in patients can be reproduced and assessed.IR is keyhole surgery using needles, specialised wires and tubes (catheters), guided by touch and imaging (x-ray, 'Cat Scan'--CT, ultrasound). IR benefits from local anaesthesia, a tiny incision, few complications, reduced postoperative pain, short hospital stay and low cost. Most IR procedures commence with needle puncture of a blood vessel to insert guide wires and catheters: these clinical skills are acquired by all radiologists during training, as an apprenticeship in patients, inevitably associated with some discomfort and occasionally, complications. 'Straightforward' cases for diagnosis are ideal for training but are being replaced by state-of-the-art, non-invasive imaging methods. While some skills (mainly visual skills, relating to orientation and spatial negotiation) can be acquired using models (as in surgery), these have limitations for IR which relies heavily on a sense of touch. Both patients and trainees would benefit from the use of computers to create a VE with devices conveying touch sensation (haptics) to realistically mimic procedures on patients. Removal of this initial experience from the clinical environment would be time efficient while improving patient safety and reducing the time taken for medical trainees to attain and maintain higher levels of competence.The key aims of this project are to:1. develop and validate a complete VE for training in vascular interventional radiology, encompassing needle puncture as well as guidewire and catheter insertion and manipulation. This is the overarching objective of this project and will be based on a task analysis of interventional procedures.2. develop methods of semi-automatically processing medical imaging data to create a variable range of 3D geometry of anatomy.3. determine and localise the forces experienced by an operator during IR procedures in patients using miniature sensors, enabling the 'feel' of a real procedure to be accurately reproduced.4. simulate needle puncture, and introduction of a guidewire and catheter into a blood vessel, with realistic behaviour of tissue and vessels.5. reproduce the feel of a pulse to guide instrumentation of an artery using a novel device which mimics a patient's physiological pulse.6. simulate ultrasound to guide needle puncture of an artery, and fluoroscopy to guide guidewire and catheter manipulation within an artery.7. validate the VE and assess its potential for training and certification. We will also make suggestions for inclusion in curricula and criteria for certification.The VE developed in this project will be generic, capable of incorporation into an existing system, or of forming the basis of a new generation of systems applicable to training. The work will be undertaken by researchers at the Universities ofLiverpool, Bangor, Hull, Leeds and Imperial; the PI (Gould) is an interventional radiologist with extensive clinical research experience and who will be the overall project co-ordinator. The technical project manager is a Computer Science professor (John) whose Research Assistant will also assist in project management. This proposal accords with the aims of EPSRC in introducing improvements in health and will also enhance economic development and stimulate interest in the sciences.