Wietske successfully defended her PhD thesis “Modeling Human Embryonic Brain Development”!!
On July 2, Wietske succesfully defended her PhD thesis: ‘Modeling Human Embryonic Brain Development’. Wietske’s PhD project marked the beginning of the collaboration between the BIGR group and the Periconception Epidemiology group of the Erasmus Medical Center. Wietske was supervised by Stefan Klein, Melek Rousian, Régine Steegers-Theunissen and Wiro Niessen. In the past five years, Wietske worked on various AI-algorithms to perform automated assessment of the growth and development of human embryonic brain in first-trimester ultrasonography. For example, by automatically measuring the embryonic volume. Using AI, measurement time can be drastically reduced, which will enable implementation in clinical practice.
Next, Wietske will continue as a postdoctoral researchers extending her work by focusing on modeling embryonic, fetal and placenta development using advanced image analysis. Ultimalty, this allows for the detection of adverse growth and congenital anomalies and will lead to more insight into the influence of lifestyle behavior and maternal and paternal conditions on prenatal development.