William E. Higgins
Distinguished
Professor of Electrical Engineering
214 Electrical
Engineering West
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
Telephone (814) 865-0186
Fax (814) 863-5341
E-mail weh2@psu.edu
Vitae
To see information on Dr. Higgins's laboratory,
visit: http://www.mipl.ee.psu.edu/
Dr. Higgins works in the areas of image processing,
computer vision, and scientific visualization. His work focuses on applications
in 3D medical imaging, 3D cardiopulmonary medicine, endoscopy, and radiology.
His current primary emphasis is on image-guided intervention systems,
multimodal endoscopic video analysis, and virtual endoscopy.
His laboratory has received funding from the National
Institutes of Health, the Whitaker Foundation, National Science Foundation, and private industry.
The laboratory has developed a number of interactive software systems for medical image analysis
and processing. These systems constitute an integrated environment for planning and guiding medical
procedures in the chest, along with tools for 3D medical image analysis/visualization and virtual
endoscopic exploration. These efforts have led to many publications and have received much international
attention. His group has also done fundamental work in the areas of image segmentation, texture analysis,
image registration, mathematical morphology, automatic procedure planning, image-guided systems,
video analysis, volume rendering, and other areas of imaging science. These efforts have also led to
many issued US and international patents, in addition to the development of FDA-approved image-guided
intervention systems used worldwide. His laboratory maintains a collaboration with the Penn State
Hershey Medical Center. Nearly 90 students have earned Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. honors degrees while working
in his laboratory. For more information, click on his laboratory's web site, given above.
Dr. Higgins came to Penn State in 1989. Prior to 1989, he was a principal
research fellow at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN (1987-1989), and he was a principal research
scientist at the Honeywell Systems and Research Center, Minneapolis, MN (1984-1987). He received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
MA, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana,
IL. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the SPIE, and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors.
In 2019, he received the Invent Penn State “Inventor of the Year” award.
He is affiliated with the Computer Science and Engineering
department and the Bioengineering program. He teaches courses in image processing, computer
vision, and signal processing.
Last
Updated: July 12, 2023
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