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Fredderique Vanheusden

Frederique Vanheusden

Senior Lecturer

School of Science & Technology

Staff Group(s)
Engineering

Role

Fred is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the MSc Medical Engineering course at the Department of Engineering in the School of Science and Technology. He has expertise in biomedical digital signal and image processing, especially related to cardiac and auditory function. Fred is the module leader of Current Developments in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Signal and Image Processing.

Career overview

Fred holds a BSc in biomedical sciences and MSc in bio-electronics and nanotechnology from the University of Hasselt, Belgium. He further holds an MSc in Molecular Medicine from Cranfield University.

Fred obtained his PhD in engineering from the University of Leicester. His thesis focused on the non-invasive estimation of sources of atrial fibrillation (AF) using body surface potential mapping (BSPM).

Before starting at NTU, Fred was a research fellow at the University of Southampton, where he looked into techniques for objectively evaluating hearing function and hearing fitting based on electro-encephalography (EEG) responses to natural speech tokens.

Research areas

Cardiac electrophysiology: Fred is interested in optimising the identification of sources of atrial fibrillation (AF) which can be used as targets for catheter ablation. He is particularly interested in AF source estimation using non-invasive body surface mapping (high-resolution electrocardiograms). Furthermore, he has worked on the quantification of cardiac scar tissue induced by catheter ablation from MRI scans.

Auditory function analysis: Fred has experience in objective evaluation of hearing function through measuring envelope frequency following response (eFFRs) to vowel tokens as well as through assessment of cortical entrainment to running speech. He is interested in electrophysiological mechanism underlying hearing impairment, and how these mechanisms are related to cognitive impairment.

Comfort perception: Fred is exploring techniques for objectively monitoring discomfort during whole-body vibration exposure by combining electrocardiography (ECG), EEG and electromyography (EMG) data. Currently, Fred is involved in the ComfDemo project funded by the Clean Sky research programme. This project is a partnership between NTU, vhp Human Performance, LMU Munich and ITAP Oldenburg and aims at understanding and optimising the comfort perception of aircraft passenger in short-range flights.

Opportunities arise to carry out postgraduate research towards and MPhil/PhD in the areas identified above. Further information may be obtained on the NTU Research Degrees website.

Sponsors and collaborators

Fred has collaborated with several academic research groups in the UK and international, including TU Delft (the Netherlands), ITAP (Oldenburg, Germany), the University of Southampton, the University of Leicester, Imperial College London, the University of Manchester and Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands). He has collaborations with Interacoustics (Denmark) and other industrial collaborators.

Publications

Chu GS, Li X, Stafford PJ, Vanheusden FJ, Salinet JL, Almeida TP, Dastagir N, Sandilands AJ, Kirchhof P, Schlindwein FS, Ng GA. Simultaneous Whole-Chamber Non-contact Mapping of Highest Dominant Frequency Sites During Persistent Atrial Fibrillation: A Prospective Ablation Study. Frontiers in Physiology. 2022:445.

Griggs KE, Vanheusden FJ. Integrated fan cooling of the lower back for wheelchair users. Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering. 2022 Sep 7;9:20556683221126994.

Aggarwal G, Mansfield N, Vanheusden F, Faulkner S. Human Comfort Model of Noise and Vibration for Sustainable Design of the Turboprop Aircraft Cabin. Sustainability. 2022 Jul 27;14(15):9199.

Salinet J, Molero R, Schlindwein FS, Karel J, Rodrigo M, Rojo-Álvarez JL, Berenfeld O, Climent AM, Zenger B, Vanheusden F, Paredes JG. Electrocardiographic imaging for atrial fibrillation: a perspective from computer models and animal experiments to clinical value. Frontiers in physiology. 2021;12.

Li X, Chu GS, Almeida TP, Vanheusden FJ, Salinet J, Dastagir N, Mistry AR, Vali Z, Sidhu B, Stafford PJ, Schlindwein FS. Automatic Extraction of Recurrent Patterns of High Dominant Frequency Mapping During Human Persistent Atrial Fibrillation. Frontiers in physiology. 2021;12.

Abeywardena CL, Vanheusden FJ, Walker KF, Arm R, Zhang Q. Fetal Movement Counting Using Optical Fibre Sensors. Sensors. 2021 Jan;21(1):48.

Vanheusden FJ, Kegler M, Ireland K, Georga C, Simpson D, Reichenbach T and Bell SL (2020). Hearing aids do not alter cortical entrainment to speech at audible levels in mild-to-moderately hearing-impaired subjects. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14: 109. ISSN 1662-5161.

Vanheusden FJ, Chesnaye MA, Simpson DM and Bell SL (2019). Envelope Frequency Following Responses Are Stronger For High-Pass Than Low-Pass Filtered Vowels, International Journal of Audiology, 58(6); 355-362.

Vanheusden FJ, Chu GS, Li X, Salinet JL, Almeida TP, Dastagir N, Stafford PJ, Ng GA and Schlindwein FS (2019). Systematic differences of non-invasive dominant frequency estimation compared to invasive dominant frequency estimation in atrial fibrillation. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 104; 299-309.

Vanheusden FJ, Bell SL, Chesnaye MA, Simpson DM (2019). Improved Detection of Vowel Envelope Frequency-Following Responses using Hotelling’s T2 Analysis. Ear and Hearing, 40(1); 116-127.

See all of Frederique Vanheusden's publications...