iHEALTH brings together interdisciplinary teams of experts to address the challenges of health engineering (starting with medical imaging) in an interdisciplinary and synergistic way in close collaboration with hospitals, industry and a broad national and international scientific network. Our researchers, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Valparaíso along with other associated universities, are experts in medical imaging/engineering; artificial intelligence for images, signals and natural language; physiology and clinical/translational research, among others.
About Us
Millennium Institute for Intelligent Healthcare Engineering
Bringing together medical imaging physics, engineering, artificial intelligence, and medicine to improve healthcare
Healthcare concerns
Healthcare and medical imaging in particular, is under big pressure due to rising costs, shortage of highly trained staff, inefficient early diagnosis, and limited access.
Our Mission
Our mission is to develop innovative methods that integrate medical imaging physics, engineering, and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve medical imaging-based healthcare by making it more accurate, efficient, and effective, and in the long term, more affordable and accessible to all Chileans.
Improving Image-Based Medical Care
Interdisciplinary Teams
Research Topics
Medical imaging technologies for early and non-invasive diagnosis of pathologies; inverse problems for the reconstruction of medical images and decrease in scanning times; Physics-informed artificial intelligence methods for medical imaging acquisition, processing and diagnosis; reliable and explainable artificial intelligence methods that integrate medical imaging with other clinical patient data; Image-based biomarkers and physiological sensors for early diagnosis and characterization of cardiovascular, liver and oncological diseases.
Responsible Research
Responsible research initiative (RRI) is a framework that recognizes research and innovation as a collective responsibility, which requires commitment among funders, researchers, stakeholders and the general public, to meet, in the best possible way, social needs in an ethical and responsible way to address the great challenges facing our societies.
Commitment
iHEALTH is especially committed to the development and promotion of RRI, and we expect our researchers and practices to follow the fundamental principles of this framework, including research ethics and integrity, open access to research results, public participation and gender equality.
Location
iHEALTH is headquartered at the Campus San Joaquin UC, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul Santiago de Chile. Our main iHEALTH hub hosts an imaging research lab as well as offices for our scientists, collaborators, and staff. We also have access to the imaging and physiology sensors research labs at the Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering (IIBM) UC and the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIB) UC, both located in the same campus.
To bring together medical and scientific researchers and encourage translational research, iHEALTH also has a second hub at Casa Central UC where the university hospital is located. Furthermore, to encourage collaborations across the country and outside the capital, iHEALTH has a third hub at Universidad de Valparaíso which has the infrastructure to connect remotely with the facilities in Santiago.
Facilities
iHEALTH has access to the following research facilities:
Three clinical MRI (0.55T, 1.5T & 3T) and 2 PET/CT scanners for research. Access to Philips MR and Siemens Healthineers source code to enable implementation of novel methods is in place.
A General Electric Vscan Air Portable Ultrasound Machine
Non-invasive blood pressure monitor (Finapres Nova)
Two equivital monitors (real-time physiological data monitoring)
BioRadio (wearable device that acquires physiological data)
Several other types of equipment (wearable and non-wearable) capable of measuring signals such as ECG, EEG, EMG, and blood pressure.
High-performance computer clusters.
