Prof Alex Houston

I obtained a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Edinburgh in 1972 and worked as a Research Assistant in Medical Imaging at the University of Dundee. In 1975 I embarked on a career in Medical Physics at the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire, where I worked until semi-retirement in 2004. During that time I specialised in nuclear medicine, spending much of my time developing methods and associated software for medical image processing. I was particularly interested in imaging of the kidney, heart and, latterly, the brain. In 2004, just prior to my semi-retirement, I was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Portsmouth. I spend some of my time in semi-retirement working on a consultancy basis for a nuclear medicine imaging software company.

My main interest is in neuroimaging, especially nuclear medicine imaging (SPECT, PET), and the use of normal brain atlases in diagnosis. I am particularly interested in the use of eigenimages, which define correlated patterns of variation in the normal population, as an integral part of normal atlases. I am also interested in the application of normal atlases to clinical problems, such as the detection of early Alzheimer's Disease, and in their potential use in problems such as ME/CFS.

I was a supervisor and examiner on the IPEM Basic Training Scheme for Medical Physicists and have also provided supervision to MSc and PhD students through my links with universities.

HOUSTON A.S. 1998. Combining cross-validation and jackknifing to assess the validity of a normal brain atlas. Proc. Medical Image Understanding and Analysis 98 (MIUA98) (eds. E. Berry, D.C. Hogg, K.V. Mardia, M.A. Smith) pp. 53-56 (Univ. of Leeds: Leeds).

JOSE R.M.J., BOYCE J.F., HOUSTON A.S. and SAMPSON W.F.D. 1998. Segmentation of renal system structures from nuclear medicine images based on co-occurrence matrices. Proc. Medical Image Understanding and Analysis 98 (MIUA98) (eds. E. Berry, D.C. Hogg, K.V. Mardia, M.A. Smith) pp. 17-20 (University of Leeds: Leeds).

FLEMING J.S., COSGRIFF P., HOUSTON A.S., JARRITT P., SKRYPNIUK J. and WHALLEY D. 1998. United Kingdom audit of relative renal function measurement using DMSA scintigraphy. Nucl Med Commun 19: 989-997.

HOUSTON A.S., WHITE D.R.R., SAMPSON W.F.D., MACLEOD M.A. and PILKINGTON J.B. 1998. An assessment of two methods for generating automatic regions of interest. Nucl Med Commun 19: 1005-1016.

MACLEOD M.A., HOUSTON A.S., SANDERS L. and ANAGNOSTOPOULOS C. 1999. The incidence of trauma related stress fractures and shin splints in male and female army recruits. Br Med J 318: 29.

HOUSTON A.S., SAMPSON W.F.D., JOSE R.M.J. and BOYCE J.F. 1999. A control systems approach for the simulation of renal dynamic software phantoms for nuclear medicine. Phys Med Biol 44: 401-411.

WHITE D.R.R., HOUSTON A.S., SAMPSON W.F.D. and WILKINS G.P. 1999. Intra- and inter-operator variations in region of interest drawing and their effect on the quantification of glomerular filtration rates. Clin Nucl Med 24: 177-181.

NIXON J.R. and HOUSTON A.S. 1999. Computers in imaging departments. (invited review) RAD magazine, May 1999 issue, pp. 79-80.

JOSE R.M.J., BOYCE J.F., HOUSTON A.S. and SAMPSON W.F.D. 1999. Comparative assessment of two methods for automatically generating regions of interest from renal nuclear medicine images. Proc. Medical Image Understanding and Analysis 99 (MIUA99) (eds D. Hawkes, D. Hill, R. Gaston) pp. 133-136.

JOSE R.M.J., BOYCE J.F., HOUSTON A.S. and SAMPSON W.F.D. 2000. Application of relaxation labelling to improve the classification of segmented renal nuclear medicine images. Proc. Medical Image Understanding and Analysis (MIUA2000), pp. 111-114, (University College London, London).

HOUSTON A.S., WHALLEY D.R., SKRYPNIUK J.V., JARRITT P.H., FLEMING J.S. AND COSGRIFF P.S. 2001. UK audit and analysis of quantitative parameters obtained from gamma camera renography. Nucl Med Commun 22: 559-566.

SANDERS L. and HOUSTON A.S. 2001. National survey of imaging technologists in nuclear medicine 1998/99. Nucl Med Commun 22: 567-573.

JARRITT P.H., WHALLEY D.R., SKRYPNIUK J.V., HOUSTON, A.S., FLEMING J.S. and COSGRIFF P.S. 2002. UK audit of single photon emission computed tomography reconstruction software using software generated phantoms. Nucl Med Commun 23: 483-491.

SANDERS L, MASOOMI M.A. and HOUSTON A.S. 2002 Can ambient temperature affect gamma camera photopeak and uniformity? Proc. Medical Image Understanding and Analysis 2002 (MIUA2002) (eds A. Houston, R Zwiggelaar) pp. 149-152.

HOUSTON A.S. and COSGRIFF P.S. 2003. Quality assurance of in-house developed software in nuclear medicine. Invited chapter in "Quality Assurance in Gamma Camera Systems". IPEM Report No. 86, pp 95-124.

HOUSTON A.S, HOFFMANN S.M.A, SANDERS L, WHITE D.R.R, BOLT L, FLEMING J.S, MACLEOD M.A. and KEMP P.M. 2003. Combining rCBF SPECT images obtained from different centres in a composite normal atlas. Proc. Medical Image Understanding and Analysis 2003 (MIUA2003) (ed. D Barber) pp 13-16.

FLEMING J.S., WHALLEY D.R., SKRYPNIUK J.V., JARRITT P.H., HOUSTON A.S., COSGRIFF P.S. and BAILEY D. 2004. UK audit of relative lung function measurement from planar radionuclide imaging. Nucl Med Commun 25: 923-934

SKRYPNIUK J.V., BAILEY D., COSGRIFF P.S., FLEMING J.S., HOUSTON A.S., JARRITT, P.H. and WHALLEY D.R. 2005. UK audit of left ventricular function ejection fraction estimation from equilibrium ECG gated blood pool images. Nucl Med Commun 26: 205-215

COSGRIFF P.S., FLEMING J.S., JARRITT P.H., SKRYPNIUK J., BAILEY D., WHALLEY D., HOUSTON A., BURNISTON M. and BLAKE G.M. 2008. UK audit of glomerular filtration rate measurement in 2001. Nucl Med Commun 29: 511-520

HOUSTON A.S., FLEMING J.S., WARD T. HOFFMANN S.M.A. 2009. Optimization of the parameters of a method for computer-aided detection of perfusion deficiencies in brain images. Nucl Med Commun 30: 687-692

HOUSTON A.S. 2011. Factor analysis. Invited chapter in "Mathematical Techniques in Nuclear Medicine". IPEM Report No. 100, pp153-171.