Amir Amini (academic)

Professor and Endowed

Amir Amini

Nationality| American
Alma mater| University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Occupation(s)| Engineer
Professor
Scientific career
Fields| Medical Imaging, Artificial Intelligence
Institutions| Yale University
Washington University in St. Louis
University of Louisville

Amir Amini is the professor and endowed chair in bioimaging at the University of Louisville. Prior to this, he was the founder of the Cardiovascular Image Analysis Laboratory and associate professor at the Washington University in St. Louis. He was elected a fellow of the IEEE (Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society) in 2007, the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2017, the International Society for Optics, Photonics, and Imaging in 2019, the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association in 2021, and the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2024.

## Early life and education

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Amir Amini attended Center Grove High School in Greenwood, Indiana.[1] He graduated with the B.S. in Electrical Engineering with high honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1983, where he was the youngest member of his graduating class at the age of 18. In 1984 he received an MSE degree from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he also earned his PhD from the Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1990.[2][3][4]

## Career

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### Teaching

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Following two years of postdoctoral work at Yale University,[5] Amini served as an assistant professor from 1992 to 1996. He was then on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis from 1996 to 2006, where he became an associate professor with tenure[6] and founded the Cardiovascular Image Analysis Laboratory.[5] He is now the professor and endowed chair in bioimaging at the University of Louisville, where he has taught since 2006 and directs the Medical Imaging Laboratory.[7] In 2009 and 2011 he was the recipient of the University of Louisville Faculty Favorite Award for teaching excellence[2] He serves on the executive committee of the Center for AI in Radiological Sciences at the University of Louisville.[8]

### Professional activities

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Amini was the chair of SPIE Medical Imaging Conference on Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images from 2002 to 2006, and in 2007 he co-chaired the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium.[2] That year he was also elected a fellow of the IEEE (Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society) with the citation “for contributions to cardiovascular imaging and medical image analysis”.[9]

He joined the editorial board of the journal IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging in 1999 and the editorial board of the journal Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics in 2012.[2] After receiving the Distinguished Lecturer Award from the IEEE EMBS in 2013, he served on the IEEE EMBS Technical Committee on Biomedical Imaging and Image Processing. Between 2016 and 2018, he served on the IEEE EMBS Administrative Committee.[6] He Chaired the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging in Washington, D.C. in 2018.[10]

In 2017 he was elected a fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering “for outstanding contributions to cardiovascular imaging, medical image analysis, and magnetic resonance imaging of flow and motion”.[11] He was next elected a fellow of the International Society for Optics, Photonics, and Imaging in 2019.[12] Additionally, he is a fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association.[13] From 2020 to 2021, he served as the Vice President for Publications for the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society for the term 2020-2021.[14] Amini has been on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (2014-2024),[2] IEEE Journal of Biomedical Health Informatics between (2016-2019), the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology since 2019,[15] and the IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering since 2020.[16] He became Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering in 2025.[17]

## Research

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Amini has made contributions in development and application of AI methods to medical imaging as well as development and application of MRI methods for determining flow and motion, including research supported by National Institute of Health[18] and National Science Foundation grants.[19] An area of significant focus for Amini’s laboratory is vascular and valvular flow imaging with MRI.[20] Under NIH funding, his laboratory has developed scan efficient 4D Flow MRI Methods with non-Cartesian trajectories[21][22][23] and deep Convolutional Neural Network models for efficient reconstruction of 4D flow MR images.[24] His laboratory has also developed computational, AI methods for Velocity to Pressure mapping for estimation of intravascular and transvalvular pressure gradients.[25][26][27]

Amini has worked on the development of computational methods for analysis of biomedical images, as well as the development of AI and Deep Learning methods for segmentation, disease classification, and analysis of medical images.[28][29][30][31] Another area of research has been imaging motion with tagged MRI for determination of left-ventricular function and myocardial strain.[32][33][34] Other research activities have included development of methods for image segmentation, determination of motion and tissue strain from US echocardiography, and lung 4D X-ray CT.[35][36][37][38] In 2020, he received the University of Massachusetts at Amherst College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award.[39]

## References

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1. ^ "Interview with Dr. Amir A. Amini". 10 May 2016.
2. ^ a b c d e "Amir Amini".
3. ^ "BME Lecture Series: Amir Amini, University of Louisville | Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine". engineering.uci.edu. 14 March 2024.
4. ^ "Past Event Overview | SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics: SPIE".
5. ^ a b "Amir Amini — Bucks For Brains". louisville.edu.
6. ^ a b https://www.embs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AMINI-bio.pdf
7. ^ "Amir Amini". J.B. Speed School of Engineering - University of Louisville.
8. ^ "Center for AI in Radiological Sciences — School of Medicine University of Louisville". louisville.edu.
9. ^ https://www.embs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2007-Awards-booklet.pdf
10. ^ "ISBI 2018".
11. ^ "Amir A. Amini, Ph.D. COF-2087 - AIMBE".
12. ^ "Complete list of SPIE Fellows". spie.org.
13. ^ "Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association". www.aaia-ai.org.
14. ^ "IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society". IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. 68 (9): C2. September 2021. doi:10.1109/TBME.2021.3097622.
15. ^ "Associate Editors".
16. ^ "Associate Editors".
17. ^ "EMBS-welcome".
18. ^ "Dr. Amini's Groundbreaking Research Receives $430,000 NIH Grant to Revolutionize Valvular Heart Disease Diagnostics". J.B. Speed School of Engineering - University of Louisville. October 4, 2023.
19. ^ "NSF Award Search: Award # 9796207 - Vision Algorithms for Analysis of Tissue and Fluid Deformations from Medical Images". www.nsf.gov.
20. ^ Cardiovascular and Neurovascular Imaging. CRC. 2015. p. 311\. ISBN 978-1-4398-9057-8.
21. ^ “4D UTE Flow: A Phase-Contrast MRI Technique for Assessment and Visualization of Stenotic Flows,” M. Kadbi, M. Negahdar, J. Cha, M. Traughber, P. Martin, M. Stoddard, and A. Amini, Magn Reson Med, 73(3), 939-950, March 2015.
22. ^ “4D Spiral Imaging of Flows in Stenotic Phantoms and Subjects with Aortic Stenosis,” MJ Negahdar, Mo Kadbi, M. Kendrick, R. Longaker, M. Stoddard, A. Amini, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Volume 75, No. 3, Pages 1018-1029, March 2016. DOI: 10.1002/mrm.25636
23. ^ “Dual-Venc Acquisition for 4D Flow MR Imaging of Aortic Stenosis with Spiral Read-Outs”, Sean Callahan, Narayana Singam, Michael Kendrick, MJ Negahdar, Hui Wang, Marcus Stoddard, A. Amini, Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Vol. 52, No. 1, pages 117-128, July 2020.
24. ^ “FlowRAU-Net: Accelerated 4D Flow MRI of Aortic Valvular Flows with a Deep 2D Residual Attention Network,” R. Nath, S. Callahan, M. Stoddard and A. A. Amini, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2022, doi: 10.1109/TBME.2022.3180691.
25. ^ “Factors Affecting the Accuracy of Pressure Measurements in Vascular Stenoses from PC MRI,” Abbas Nasiraei-Moghaddam, Nasser Fatouraee, Geoffrey Behrens, Ramesh Agarwal, Eric Choi, and Amir A. Amini, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Volume 52, No. 2, pp. 300-309, August 2004.
26. ^ Relative Pressure Estimation from 4D Flow MRI Using Generalized Bernoulli Equation in a Phantom Model of Arterial Stenosis, Amirkhosro Kazemi, Daniel Adam Padgett, Sean Callahan, Marcus Stoddard, and Amir A Amini, Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, Vol. 35, pp. 733–748, 2022.
27. ^ “4Dflow-VP-Net: A Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Non-Invasive Estimation of Relative Pressures in Stenotic Flows from 4D Flow MRI”, R. Nath, Amirkhosro Kazemi, S. Callahan, M. Stoddard and A. A. Amini, Magn Reson Med. 2023; 90(5): 2175-2189. doi: 10.1002/mrm.29791
28. ^ “AI in Medical Imaging Informatics: Current Challenges and Future Directions,” A. S. Panayides, A. Amini, et al., IEEE Journal of Biomedical Health Informatics, (24)7:1837-1857, July 2020.
29. ^ “Lung Nodule Malignancy Prediction from Longitudinal CT Scans with Siamese Convolutional Attention Networks,” B. P. Veasey, J. Broadhead, M. Dahle, A. Seow, and A. Amini, IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, vol. 1, pp. 257-264, 2020.
30. ^ “Recurrent Attention Network for False Positive Reduction in the Detection of Pulmonary Nodules in Thoracic CT Scans” M. Farhangi, N. Petrick, B. Sahiner, H. Frigui, A. Amini, A. Pezeshk, Medical Physics, DOI: 10.1002/mp.14076 February 2020.
31. ^ "3D Active Contour Segmentation Based on Sparse Linear Combination of Training Shapes (SCoTS)”, M. Farhangi, H. Frigui, A. Seow, and A. Amini, IEEE Trans. On Medical Imaging, Vol. 36, Issue 11, Nov. 2017, pp. 2239-2249
32. ^ “Tagged MRI Analysis Techniques: I”, I. El-Sayed, A. Hussanein, H. Wang, and A. Amini, Chapter 15 of Heart Mechanics: Magnetic Resonance Imaging – Advanced Techniques, Clinical Applications and Future Trends, I. El-Sayed (Ed.), CRC Press, May 2017.
33. ^ “Cardiac Motion and Deformation Recovery from MRI: A Review,” H. Wang and A. Amini, IEEE Trans on Med Imaging, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 487-503, Feb. 2012.
34. ^ “Analysis of 3D Cardiac Deformations with 3D SinMod,” Hui Wang, C. Stoeck, S. Kozerke, and A. Amini, Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2013;2013:4386-9. (United States Patent 10776998 9/15/2020)
35. ^ Segmentation and Tracking of Lung Nodules via Graph-Cuts Incorporating Shape Prior and Motion from 4D CT”, J. Cha, M. Farhangi, N. Dunlap, and A. Amini, Medical Physics, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 297-306, January 2018
36. ^ “Tissue Doppler Imaging Optical Flow (TDIOF): A Combined B-Mode and Tissue Doppler Approach for Cardiac Motion Estimation in Echocardiographic Images,” V. Tavakoli, N. Bhatia, M. Stoddard, and A. Amini, IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Engineering, 61(8):2264-2277, 2014, doi:10.1109/TBME.2014.2299551.
37. ^ “Comparison of Indices of Regional Lung Function from 4D CT: Jacobian vs. Strain of Deformation”, M.R., N. Dunlap, A. Zacarias, A. C. Civelek, S.Y. Woo, and A. Amini, International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, San Francisco, CA, April 2013.
38. ^ “A Survey of Shaped-Based Registration and Segmentation Techniques for Cardiac Images,” V. Tavakoli and A. Amini, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 117 (9), 966-989, September 2013.
39. ^ "Alumni Awards : College of Engineering : UMass Amherst".

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