Offre en lien avec l’Action/le Réseau : – — –/– — –

Laboratoire/Entreprise : Laboratoire d’Informatique et des Systèmes (LIS)
Durée : 3 ans
Contact : paul.chauchat@lis-lab.fr
Date limite de publication : 2024-05-24

Contexte :

Sujet :
The complete offer is available here:
https://www.lis-lab.fr/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Sujet_these_homeostasie-2.pdf

Context and Positioning
Homeostasis is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal balance necessary for their survival and optimal functioning. This process typically involves feedback mechanisms that detect deviations from a target state and activate responses to correct these deviations and return the system to a stable level. The homeostasis capabilities of an individual are used to support medical decision making, such as patients’ peri-operative risk stratification in lung cancer surgery.
The homeostatic abilities of an individual can be assessed through exercise testing, which is the traditional clinical method for evaluating patients’ health status and overall systemic dynamics. A series of tests is designed to measure features representative of the individual’s homeostatic capabilities, with one significant metric being the maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max). These measurements are obtained through routine functional tests and maximal exercise sessions, aimed at challenging the entire organism to evaluate physiological adaptive responses. When exercise performance or maximal aerobic capacity is limited for a given patient, the medical doctor has to identify the failing physiological function and to provide a coherent system failure mechanics analyzing the monitored data. However, medical doctors still analyze the collected physiological data in a univariate approach as historically developed. Currently, in the research community, the human body is considered as a dynamic physiological complex system. Recently, the framework of network physiology was proposed, giving a central role to homeostasis.
To broaden theoretical knowledge and to fill the gap between current research and medical practice, the Exercise Test Laboratory of Hôpitaux Universitaires de Marseille built its own activity database composed of 2500 exercise tests.

Objectives
This thesis aims at exploiting this dataset in order to provide a global understanding and interpretation framework of the multivariate data generated during maximal exercise testing to improve patients’ homeostasis phenotyping through their homeostatic capabilities.
We aim to develop a medically and statistically consistent approach to identifying and quantifying determinants of overall performance as well as aerobic performance from monitored variables. This would provide physicians with improved analytical tools to achieve a more relevant and precise patient exercise phenotyping.
The thesis project aims to go further and provide physicians with a quantitative decision support indicator. It will be developed by focusing on the dynamic interactions between the recorded variables. Here, we consider in particular adapting the framework of physiological networks to the mesoscopic and macroscopic case of exercise tests. This would provide crucial information to the physician about patients’ homeostatic capacities.

Work environment
The recruited candidate will work at LIS-lab and C2VN, in Marseille. They will have access to the computing cluster of LIS.
In addition to the supervising team, the PhD candidate will work in close collaboration with a junior hospital doctor.

Profil du candidat :
We are looking for a candidate with both an appeal to work on precise and effective medical problems, and a strong theoretical background in one of the following:
• System and control theory
• Signal/Image/Graph processing
• Computer science
• Machine learning/Artificial intelligence
Good coding skills are also required, preferably in Python.
The candidate should be able to work autonomously, and interact efficiently with the team. Critical thinking, especially when interpreting results, is crucial.

Candidate selection is a two-stage process. First the supervision team will shortlist three candidates, who will then be auditioned by Laennec Institute scientific board.
The application must include a CV, a motivation letter, and the master’s degree grade transcript (first year, and at least the first semester of the second year if it is ongoing).

Formation et compétences requises :

Adresse d’emploi :
Laboratoire d’Informatique et des Systèmes
LIS UMR 7020 CNRS / AMU / UTLN
Aix Marseille Université – Campus de Saint Jérôme – Bat. Polytech
52 Av. Escadrille Normandie Niemen
13397 Marseille Cedex 20

Document attaché : 202403261024_Sujet_thèse_homéostasie.pdf