Dr Rachel Sparks

Rachel Sparks is a Lecturer in Surgical and Interventional Engineering at the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London. The primary focus of her research is on developing computer assisted planning and image-guided navigation techniques to increase accuracy of targeting pathologic structures and improve safety during surgical treatments. This work involves building patient-specific models of anatomy, and using these models to provide quantitative measures of risk and efficacy related to surgical interventions, including the placement of tools, removal or thermal treatment of tissue.

Ongoing work in her group is focused on using deep learning to improve the ability identify and delineate important structures of interest within the brain (e.g. vasculature, white matter tracts, and pathology) as well as to simulate tissue response to surgical interventions. These techniques are translated into the clinical as part of the Epilepsy-Navigator (EpiNavTM) software platform to provide clinical tools for the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy.