Personal profile

Biography

Rudy Lapeer obtained an MSc in Mechanical Engineering with Distinction at the IHR Ghent (now University of Ghent) in Belgium in July 1988. His first job was as a production engineer at VOLVO Cars Europe in Ghent where he worked for three years. In 1992 he moved back to academia and took up the post of Software Engineer at the Department of Medical Informatics, University of Ghent (RUG). Meanwhile he embarked on a part-time MSc degree in Computer Science which he completed in 1993 with Distinction. He was then offered a Research Associate position at the University of Cambridge, working on the EU funded project Euro-Punch which involved the prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes from clinical data. He started a PhD at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge in 1996, funded by the EPSRC, which he successfully completed in 1999. He was subsequently offered a Senior Research Fellowship at the Department of Medical Physics and Bio-engineering at University College London (UCL) working on an EPSRC funded project on augmented reality surgical navigation (CASSPAR). In 2001 he also worked as a Software Consultant for the UCL based company MTT (Medical Technology Transfer). In 2002, he was appointed as a Lecturer at the School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia. In the academic year 2007-8, he received the UEA’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was promoted to the position of Senior Lecturer in 2010. He has been the school's Admissions Director (a school Exec post) from 2009-2012 and from 2016-2020, and the Employability Director from 2013-2016.  Since late 2019, he has adopted the title of Associate Professor.  
 

 

Key Research Interests

My research interests are in medical visualisation, surgical navigation and simulation, physics simulation and biomechanics. In the broader context this encompasses computer graphics, computer animation, computer vision, mechanics, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), finite element analysis (FEA) and numerical methods.

Below are a number of links to projects I have been working on:
 

  • Surgical Navigation -  We developed a hardware/software platform, called ARView,  for image enhanced (augmented reality) surgical navigation. This is in particular aimed at ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) surgery where the stereoscopic surgical microscope and the rigid sinus endoscope are used as intra-operative imaging devices.
     
  • Medical Visualisation -  In collaboration with the late Dr. Roger Rowland from RMR Systems we developed 3DView which is a software solution aimed at the rendering and post-processing of medical image data from different modalities (X-ray CT, MRI, PET). 
     
  • Surgical Simulation - We use advanced computer graphics solutions with hardware acceleration, explicit finite element (FE) algorithms and haptic feedback to simulate open surgery procedures. In this context, we have also performed a series of in-vitro experiments on human skin to assess its hyper- and visco-elastic properties.
     
  • Human Childbirth Biomechanics - We have studied fetal head moulding using finite element analysis. We have also investigated the effect of forceps delivery and vacuum extraction on the fetal head and the biomechanics of shoulder dystocia. More recently, we developed the BirthView childbirth simulator that is capable of exhibiting the mechanisms or 'cardinal movements' of the second stage of labour. 
      


Rudy Lapeer is part of the Computer Graphics Group and Medical computing group.


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Selected Publications:

Rudy Lapeer, Zelimkhan Gerikhanov, Said‑Magomed Sadulaev, Vilius Audinis, Roger Rowland, Kenda Crozier and Edward Morris. A computer‑based simulation of childbirth using the partial Dirichlet–Neumann contact method with total Lagrangian explicit dynamics on the GPU. Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, 18 (3), 681-700, 2019.

Lapeer R.J., Gasson P.D. and Karri V. Simulating plastic surgery: From human skin tensile tests, through hyperelastic finite element models to real-time haptics. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 103: 208-216, 2010.

Lapeer R.J., Jeffrey S.J., Dao J.T., Gonzalez-Garcia G., Chen M.S., Shickell S., Rowland R. and Philpott C. Using a passive coordinate measurement arm for motion tracking of a rigid endoscope for augmented reality image guided surgery. IJMRCAS, 65-77, 2013.

Lapeer R., Chen M.S., Gonzalez G., Linney A. and Alusi G. Image-enhanced surgical navigation for endoscopic sinus surgery: evaluating calibration, registration and tracking. International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery. 2008(4):32-45, DOI: 10.1002/rcs.175.

Lapeer, R. J. and Prager, R. W. "Fetal head moulding: finite element analysis of a fetal skull subjected to uterine pressures during the first stage of labour." Journal of Biomechanics 34(9): 1125-1133, 2001.

 

Key Responsibilities

Current:

  • Course Director of the MSc in Advanced Computing Sciences
  • Deputy Director of Admissions
  • Deputy Chair of the PGT Exam Board
  • Member of the Teaching Executive

Recent:

  • Director of Admissions and School Exec member (2009-2012 and 2016-2020)
  • Employability Director (2013-2016)
  • Course Director of the BSc in Computing Science, Imaging and Multimedia (2010-2020)
  • Course Director of the MSc in Games Development (2010-2019)

 

Areas of Expertise

Medical imaging and visualisation; surgical navigation and simulation; biomechanics.

Teaching Interests

Current:

  • Advanced Programming (Level 6, 7)
  • Computer Graphics (Level 5)
  • Final year (Level 6) and MSc (Level 7) projects

Recent:

  • Software Engineering (Level 5)
  • Computer Games Development (Level 7)
  • Thermodynamics (ENG Level 4)

Older:

  • Mathematics
  • Medical Physics
  • Digital Systems

 

 

 

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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