unimi                               ecmi

Shape and Size

in     

Medicine, Biotechnology and Materials Science

Department of Mathematics
Università degli Studi di Milano
April 28-29, 2008

A workshop of an ECMI Special Interest Group (SIG)

The workshop photogallery


This workshop is partially funded by the PRIN2005 programme "Nanostrutture biominerali su interfacce di carbonati e solfuri"

Often the diagnosis of a pathology, or the description of a biological process, or the mechanical-chemical properties of a material mainly depend on the shapes which are present in images of cells, organs, biological systems, sections of materials, crystals, etc., and mathematical models which relate the main features of these shapes with the correct outcome of the diagnosis, or with the main kinetic parameters of a biological system or a crystallization process, are still not present.

In applications, bodies rarely have exactly the same shape within measurement error; hence randomness of shapes need to be taken into account. Thanks to the development of information technologies, the last decade has seen a considerable growth of interest in the statistical theory of shape and its application to many and diverse scientific areas.

From the mathematical point of view, shape analysis uses a variety of mathematical tools ranging from differential geometry, geometric measure theory, stochastic geometry, armonic analysis, wavelets, etc.

The aim of this workshop is to gather both mathematicians and scientists from diverse scientific areas, and emphasize topics which are relevant in Medicine, Biotechnology and Material Sciences, with attention both to  direct and inverse problems.

Among direct problems, spatio-temporal pattern formation deals with the analysis of how patterns are created and developed in biology. Among inverse problems, various statistical techniques of shape analysis  can measure in a quantitative way the random variability of objects; recent methods of image analysis include optical imaging of objects in turbid media, which can be used as a non-invasive technique for the detection of tumours in the body.

The workshop is structured as an awareness seminar, where

-  non mathematicians provide data/ propose test cases
-  mathematicians run test cases with innovative methods

Most of the time will be devoted to invited lectures, but some time for posters and/or contributed papers will be scheduled.
Speakers and abstracts

Tentative Programme

 Registration 

Please fill in the registration form and send it by fax or email to the contact address reported below by January 31, 2008 

Venue

The meeting will take place at the Department of Mathematics, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Saldini 50, Milano (Italy): informations on accommodation and directions are available. For good maps click here. Help with public transports may be sought on the ATM Website (only in italian) .


Organizing Committee

Vincenzo Capasso, Università degli Studi di Milano
Alessandra Micheletti, Università degli Studi di Milano

Contact address 

Alessandra Micheletti,
Dept. of Mathematics, Università degli Studi di Milano
via Saldini 50, 20133 Milano
phone and fax: +39-02 50316120
email: shape@mat.unimi.it

 

accomodation

The following hotels are close to the conference venue. Prices are quoted in the web pages of the hotels.  Some of them can organize additonal services like transportation to and from the airport, etc.

Participants needing accommodation in Milan are kindly requested to contact directly the hotels to make the booking.