Isabelle Claude is a lec­tur­er spe­cial­ist in med­ical image pro­cess­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mul­ti-modal­i­ty image seg­men­ta­tion, cur­rent­ly work­ing on the MAAGIE project fund­ed by the ANR, the aim of which is to improve the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of bil­iary diseases.

Isabelle Claude works with mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing as well as com­put­ed tomog­ra­phy and ultra­son­ics. This leads her, depend­ing on the clin­i­cal request sub­mit­ted to her, to devel­op spe­cif­ic tools.

Launched in Jan­u­ary 2025 for a peri­od of four years, MAAGIE brings togeth­er three lab­o­ra­to­ries: UTC-BMBI, ISIR and LIP6 of Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty and two AP-HP hos­pi­tals, Saint-Antoine Hos­pi­tal in Paris and Hen­ri-Mon­dor Hos­pi­tal in Créteil. The aim of the project is to improve the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of lithi­a­sic and tumor­ous dis­eases of the bile ducts, both of which pre­vent bile from flow­ing, with poten­tial­ly dra­mat­ic con­se­quences for the patient.

The idea behind this project? “It’s about giv­ing gas­troen­terol­o­gists the ben­e­fit of the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments in both robot­ics and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, as has been the case in the vas­cu­lar and car­diac fields. The aim is to improve the suc­cess rate of endo­scop­ic ret­ro­grade cholan­giopan­cre­atog­ra­phy (ERCP). A com­pli­cat­ed inter­ven­tion since it involves insert­ing an endo­scope through the patien­t’s mouth, pass­ing it through the stom­ach, then find­ing the papil­la, an open­ing in the duo­de­num through which instru­ments are insert­ed. These will be passed up into the bile ducts either to remove stones or to insert stents,” explains Isabelle Claude. This dou­ble endo­lu­mi­nal access caus­es 5 to 10% of the pro­ce­dure to fail.

What are the solu­tions to reduce this fail­ure rate? As part of his the­sis, Abdel­ha­di Essam­lali adapt­ed a U‑Net mod­el, a tool based on con­vo­lu­tion­al neur­al net­works, to the prob­lem of image seg­men­ta­tion and then 3D recon­struc­tion of the bil­iary tree. A tool val­i­dat­ed by clin­i­cal part­ners. “The first step is to recon­struct the bile ducts in 3D using 2D images (MRI, scan­ner) of the patient before the oper­a­tion. This allows the prac­ti­tion­er to bet­ter fol­low the patien­t’s anato­my and thus bet­ter plan the ERCP. Then, in the pre­op­er­a­tive phase, the 3D recon­struc­tion is merged with the pla­nar flu­o­roscopy images to help the sur­geon find the right duct to treat,” con­cludes Isabelle Claude.

MSD