PhD AI-based cardiovascular image analysis and modeling

About your role

As a PhD candidate, you will work on improving the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease, with a clear focus on clinical application during catheterization procedures. Your research sits at the intersection of medical image analysis, generative AI, and blood flow modeling.

You will:

• develop deep generative models (such as latent diffusion models, implicit neural representations, and flow matching) for uncertainty-aware 3D reconstruction of coronary anatomy from 2D X-ray angiography;
• develop physics-informed neural networks and graph-based neural operators for fast estimation of 3D coronary hemodynamics (velocity, pressure, and wall shear stress fields);
• design computational pipelines that integrate image-based anatomy, blood flow physics, and uncertainty quantification;
• validate the developed methods on retrospective multi-center clinical datasets, in collaboration with clinical partners in the Netherlands and abroad;
• critically assess model performance and interpret results in the context of clinical and hemodynamic relevance;
• write scientific articles for high-impact journals and present your findings at national and international conferences and workshops.

You are a motivated researcher with a strong technical background and a genuine interest in applying artificial intelligence to real clinical problems. You are curious, creative, and rigorous: you enjoy developing new methods and you care deeply about thorough validation and their impact on patient care.

You have:

• an MSc degree in biomedical engineering, applied mathematics, computer science, physics or a related discipline;
• demonstrable experience with scientific programming (preferably in Python, including deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch);
• affinity with medical image analysis and computational modeling;
• experience with neural networks for image analysis, generative modeling, geometric deep learning or physics-informed machine learning, or you are willing to learn these quickly;
• strong collaboration skills: you enjoy working in a multidisciplinary team and feel comfortable interacting with clinicians;
• excellent English communication skills (speaking and writing); only applications in English will be considered.

Experience with cardiovascular imaging or computational fluid dynamics is an advantage.

• A flying start to your career in scientific research, with the opportunity to obtain a PhD degree.
• Plenty of room for your drive to shape tomorrow's healthcare.
• Working on large-scale and in-house research, with motivated colleagues from all over the world.
• You will be employed by Amsterdam UMC Research BV.
• A contract for 4 years (initial contract of 1 year, extended upon good performance).
• Classification in salary scale OIO: € 3.217 to € 4.077 gross for full-time employment (depending on experience). In addition to a good basic salary, we offer 8.3% end-of-year bonus. Calculate your net salary here.
• Holiday hours: 190.4 per year for fulltime and a possibility to save additional hours.
• Pension accrual with BeFrank, a modern, comprehensible and fairly priced pension.
• For >7 km each way, 100% reimbursement for public transport travel costs and, for private transport, €0.18 per km up to a maximum of 40 km each way.
• Do you prefer walking or cycling? Take advantage of our good bike scheme. Moreover, you will receive a reimbursement of €0.18 per km.