Our Research
The Helmholtz Association’s research fields tackle the major challenges and pressing issues facing society and develop sustainable solutions for tomorrow and beyond. As an enabler, Helmholtz Imaging will foster the interdisciplinary development and use of imaging methods and modalities.
Helmholtz Imaging covers the entire spectrum from data acquisition, data preparation, data management to data analysis. Each part of this imaging process is associated with specific scientific challenges and research software tools. Expertise on all these issues is available in the Helmholtz community. Helmholtz Imaging aims to leverage this treasure of knowledge while simultaneously enriching it with new research results.
Helmholtz Imaging has three research units that specialize in different areas along the imaging pipeline: model-based inverse design, integrative imaging data science and image analysis & benchmarking. They are united by cutting-edge research and comprehensive imaging expertise, which provide an excellent starting point for research collaborations and state-of-the-art imaging solutions. This portfolio is completed by the Helmholtz Imaging projects, which are granted to interdisciplinary research teams that explore innovative topics at the interface of imaging and information & data sciences.
Helmholtz Imaging’s research is based on a cross-community and cross-research-field approach that provides a unique opportunity to combine the skills and strengths of individual researchers and centers for the benefit of the entire Association.
Helmholtz Imaging Projects provide funding for cross-cutting research collaborations on innovative research topics in the field of imaging and data science.
Interdisciplinary teams systematically find and exploit synergies across modalities and research questions, highlighting common challenges and generalizing solutions across the Helmholtz community. The first projects started in 2020. Discover these outstanding and fascinating research projects with us or become a part of Helmholtz Imaging Projects and apply for your own project.
JIMM: Geophysical Joint Inversion for Accurate Brain Myelin Mapping
The aim of this project is to develop a method for clinically diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases. The content of myelin in the brain – a substance that becomes degraded in diseases – will be quantified using methods from geophysics in order to facilitate early detection and treatment
BRLEMMM: Breaking resolution limit of electron microscopy for magnetic materials
A new method will make it possible to take images of the magnetic properties of materials under the electron microscope and to correlate these properties with their atomic structure. In order to achieve high resolution, a special algorithm must be developed to compute the magnetic properties from the microscope data.
Hyper 3D-AI: Artificial Intelligence for 3D multimodal point cloud classification
The aim is to develop an artificial intelligence that can achieve the fusion of two-dimensional data with three-dimensional information. Based on this, the software would simultaneously be able to recognise image characteristics as well as the spatial relationships between different objects.
Avanti: X-ray tomoscopy of dynamic manufacturing processes
How can the manufacturing processes of materials be mapped at the smallest level? How do you train an artificial intelligence to analyze these processes automatically? That’s the focus of the Avanti project, which aims to improve X-ray tomoscopy – the imaging and quantification of three-dimensional images of very fast-moving processes.
HIT Permafrost: The Hidden Image of Thawing Permafrost
The project aims to develop a method for determining just how extensively thaw processes have already progressed in permafrost regions. The machine learning approach to be developed will be used to analyse radar images from aircraft in order to learn more about the properties of the subsurface permafrost.
Various challenges currently impede advanced AI technologies from directly benefiting society. We pioneer research in three focus areas to address these challenges:
- we aim to advance to a deeper understanding and generalizability of algorithms (Focus Area Image Analysis),
- we consider humans as an integral part of AI-application to enable reliable and safe deployment (Focus Area Human-Machine Interaction), and
- we lead initiatives towards standardizing evaluation and benchmarking practices in the field and develop user-friendly tools to guide the community (Focus Area Validation Benchmarking).
Various challenges currently impede advanced AI technologies from directly benefiting society. We pioneer research in three focus areas to address these challenges:
- we aim to advance to a deeper understanding and generalizability of algorithms (Focus Area Image Analysis),
- we consider humans as an integral part of AI-application to enable reliable and safe deployment (Focus Area Human-Machine Interaction), and
- we lead initiatives towards standardizing evaluation and benchmarking practices in the field and develop user-friendly tools to guide the community (Focus Area Validation Benchmarking).
The amount of image data, algorithms and visualization solutions is growing vastly. This results in the urgent demand for integration across multiple modalities and scales in space and time. We develop and provide HIP solutions that can handle the very heterogeneous image data from the research areas of the Helmholtz Association without imposing restrictions on the respective image modalities. To lay the groundwork for the implementation of HIP solutions, our team at MDC will focus on the following research topics:
- Develop concepts and algorithms for handling and generic processing of high-dimensional datasets
- Develop algorithms for large, high-dimensional image data stitching, fusion and visualization
Helmholtz Imaging captures the world of science. Discover unique data sets, ready-to-use software tools, and top-level research papers. The platform’s output originates from our research groups as well as from projects funded by us, theses supervised by us and collaborations initiated through us. Altogether, this showcases the whole diversity of Helmholtz Imaging.
Our Portfolio
Helmholtz Imaging empowers and supports scientists in all aspects of imaging, on different occasions, at any point in their career and at all levels.
To gain an overview of the broad spectrum of novel imaging modalities and make it easy to find the experts you are looking for we created the community network Helmholtz Imaging CONNECT. You can get in touch with us via our Support Hub – the gateway for all imaging-related requests be it support for data handling, consultation regarding software or methods, or research issues. For more in-depth collaborations, apply for Helmholtz Imaging Collaborations to work together with us on mid-term projects striving to find solutions to challenging research questions. You will benefit from our broad knowledge on the rich pool of methods that enable state-of-the-art solutions tailored to your problems. Financial funding can be requested through our annual Helmholtz Imaging Project calls for interdisciplinary collaborative research projects.
The entire output will again be made available to the community. Resources such as software and data sets are available as easy-to-use open-source Helmholtz Imaging Solutions, gained expertise and research results will be shared in seminars, schools and workshops and the early engagement of external partners will benefit society.