Michael David Abramoff, MD, PhD (born 1963) is an American ophthalmologist, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is the Robert C. Watzke Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa.
Abramoff was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and received his MD and MS (information theory) from the University of Amsterdam. He was a research fellow in the Neural Networks lab at RIKEN, Tokyo, Japan. He was Director of R&D at Prodix SA, an image analysis company in Paris, France. He performed his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Utrecht Academic Hospital, and his vitreoretinal fellowship at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He did his graduate research in medical image analysis at the University of Utrecht. He was faculty at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam before moving to Iowa.
Abramoff is referred to as "The Retinator" because of his work on improving automated medical diagnostic algorithms, translating these into the frontlines of care and improved healthcare productivity, as well as unraveling the causes of retinal diseases and blindness. One of his more popular keynote addresses was for SPIE Medical Imaging. He serves on the editorial board of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science and Nature Scientific Reports.
Abramoff is the author of over 250 peer-reviewed research articles, with his most cited article receiving over 9000 citations to date, which brings him to an h-index of 45. He is inventor on 15 US and international patents and patent applications primarily related to retinal imaging.
Abramoff founded three companies, EyeCheck, a teleretinal diabetic retinopathy screening company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and i-Optics, an ophthalmic device company. In 2010, he founded IDx LLC, of which he is currently President. In March 2016, IDx announced an Alliance for Eye Health with IBM Watson.
He was an interviewer for Spielberg’s Shoah Visual History Project. He has written several plays, one of which (Echt) has been produced and staged in Amsterdam. He contributed to the Vance Integral Edition.
2016 Charles D. Phelps Memorial Award for Glaucoma Research
2013 Young Investigator Award, Macula Society
2011 President’s Innovation Award, American Telemedicine Association
2003 PG Binkhorst Award, “Objective Measurement of Motion in the Orbit”
2001 McKinsey Inc. for Best Business plan in the Netherlands
2002 3M-Jonkers Award
1990 Peter Reichertz Prize for best young researcher, European Federation for Medical Informatics
Abràmoff, Michael D (2004). "Image processing with ImageJ". Biophotonics International. 11 (7): 36–42.
Staal, J; Abramoff, Michael D; Niemeijer, M; Viergever, MA; van Ginneken, B (2004). "Ridge-based vessel segmentation in color images of the retina". IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 23 (4): 501–509. doi:10.1109/TMI.2004.825627.
Niemeijer, M; Staal, J; Van Ginneken, B; Loog, M; Abràmoff, Michael D (2004). "Comparative study of retinal vessel segmentation methods on a new publicly available database". Proc SPIE Med Imag. 5307: 648–656. doi:10.1117/12.535349.
Niemeijer, M; van Ginneken, B; Staal, J; Suttorp-Schulten, MS; Abramoff, MD (2005). "Automatic detection of red lesions in digital color fundus photographs". IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 24 (5): 584–592. PMID 15889546.
Abramoff, Michael D; Garvin, Mona K; Sonka, Milan (2010). "Retinal Imaging and Image Analysis". IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. 3: 169–208. doi:10.1109/RBME.2010.2084567.
Niemeijer, M; van Ginneken, B; Russell, SR; Suttorp-Schulten, MS; Abramoff, MD (2007). "Automated detection and differentiation of drusen, exudates, and cotton-wool spots in digital color fundus photographs for diabetic retinopathy diagnosis". Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 48 (5): 2260–2267. PMID 17460289. doi:10.1167/iovs.06-0996.
Garvin, MK; Abramoff, MD; Wu, X; Russell, SR; Burns, TL; Sonka, M (2009). "Automated 3-D Intraretinal Layer Segmentation of Macular Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography Images". IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 28 (9): 1436–1347. PMID 19278927. doi:10.1109/TMI.2009.2016958.
Niemeijer, M; van Ginneken, B; Cree, MJ; Mizutani, A; Quellec, G; Sanchez, CI; Zhang, B; Hornero, R; Lamard, M; Muramatsu, C; Wu, XQ; Cazuguel, G; You, J; Mayo, A; Li, Q; Hatanaka, Y; Cochener, B; Roux, C; Karray, F; Garcia, M; Fujita, H; Abramoff, MD (2010). "Retinopathy Online Challenge: Automatic Detection of Microaneurysms in Digital Color Fundus Photographs". IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 29 (1): 185–195. doi:10.1109/tmi.2009.2033909.
Garvin, MK; Abramoff, MD; Kardon, R; Russell, SR; Wu, X; Sonka, M (2008). "Intraretinal layer segmentation of macular optical coherence tomography images using optimal 3-D graph search". IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 27 (10): 1495–1505. PMID 18815101. doi:10.1109/TMI.2008.923966.
Sohn, EH; van Dijk, HW; Jiao, C; Kok, PH; Jeong, W; Demirkaya, N; Garmager, A; Wit, F; Kucukevcilioglu, M; van Velthoven, ME; DeVries, JH; Mullins, RF; Kuehn, MH; Schlingemann, RO; Sonka, M; Verbraak, FD; Abramoff, MD (2016). "Retinal neurodegeneration may precede microvascular changes characteristic of diabetic retinopathy in diabetes mellitus". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 113 (19): E2655–E2664. PMID 27114552. doi:10.1073/pnas.1522014113.
