Andre is an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics-Statistics and the University of Maine. He is also a member of the Institute for Molecular Biophysics and is an adjunct research scientist at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Education

PhD Mathematics-Astrophysics, Universite Laval, Quebec 2004, MS Mathematics, Concordia University, Montreal 1999, BS Mathematics, Concordia University, Montreal 1996

Research interests

On the Development and Use of Rigorously Well-Defined, Quantitative, and Objective Image Analysis Tools: Keeping Up With Technological Advancements

 The recent technological development of imaging and microscopy techniques has become so important (the recent arrival of the 4Pi microscope at The Jackson Laboratory (TJL) being a good example) that equally advanced, quantitative, and objective image analysis tools must be developed in order to characterize everything that this new technology has to offer.  Our work is centered on the development and application of two quantitative image analysis formalisms: The Metric Space Technique (MST) and the Wavelet-Transform Modulus Maxima Method (WTMMM). The MST is a general formalism based on the mathematical branches of Analysis and Topology, which yields an overall complexity score of the analyzed image.  Instead of characterizing an image on a pixel-to-pixel basis, the MST allows one to characterize an image quantitatively, by way of bio-physically meaningful “output functions”.  These output functions are user-defined and application-related, and can be as diverse as the distribution of density in the image, to the actual filamentary structure of the analyzed objects, which makes the MST a very powerful, versatile, and most importantly, adaptable image analysis tool.  The WTMMM is a wavelet-based multifractal formalism that has been developed over the past twenty years and used in signal and image analysis applications in almost all of the applied sciences, including DNA sequence analysis, finance, turbulence, astrophysics, geophysics, and bio-medical imagery.  The WTMMM uses the multi-scale analyzing power of the wavelet-transform to characterize objects that have details at all scales. Image segmentation, overall morphological characterization, and modeling are examples of what can be done with the aid of the WTMMM. Both tools are presently being developed and used for object segmentation, geometrical and morphological characterization, and (multi) fractal analysis of: Chromosome territories in mouse bone marrow cell nuclei (with Kevin Mills, TJL); the large-scale structure of the Universe (with Yongfeng Wu and David Batuski, UMaine); and, membrane surfaces (with Sam Hess, U.Maine and Josh Zimmerberg, NIH).

Publications

• Khalil A, Joncas G, Nekka F, Kestener P, Arneodo A. 2006.
• Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (in press -- August 2006) 35 pages.
• Khalil A, Joncas G, Nekka F. 2004.
• Khalil A, Joncas G, Nekka F. 2002.

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