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. Fred has further interest in drug-induced cardiac toxicity modelling.
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/Stress perception: Fred is exploring techniques for objectively monitoring discomfort during whole-body vibration exposure by combining electrocardiography (ECG), EEG and electromyography (EMG) data. Fred has also been working on developing objective measures of stress in eSports participants during competitive tasks. He has also worked on evaluating feedback responses to financial gains/losses and correlating them to an individual's attitude to financial risk-taking.
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 Kumoh National Institute of Technology (KIT, South Korea), 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
Vanheusden FJ, Vadapalli SK, Rashid M, Griffiths, MD, Kim A. Religiosity, Financial Risk Taking, and Reward Processing: An Experimental Study. Journal of Gambling Studies, 2024: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10899-024-10324-4.
Vadapalli SK, Vanheusden FJ, Butt AT, Abdelgaied A, Mansfield NJ, Griggs KE. Thriving through trials and tribulations: the impact of the ‘Grand Challenge’ on engineering student resilience skills. European Journal of Engineering Education, 2024: https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2024.2397420.
Deoisres S, Lu Y, Vanheusden FJ, Bell SL, Simpson DM. Continuous speech with pauses inserted between words increases cortical tracking of speech envelope. PLoS One, 2023; 18(7):e0289288.
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.
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.