About me
I am a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory and Prieneke van Hoeve Fellow working on the deblending of galaxies for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and detecting melanoma in images of human skin.
Roughly 50% of the 20 billion galaxies that LSST will observe, will be blended, meaning that they will overlap in the images taken by the survey. Measurements of the ellipticity can inform us on the matter distribution in the Universe. In combination with the galaxy's colour, resulting in photometric redshift estimates, we can obtain a tomographic view of the Universe, yielding us insights into its structure and origin. However, the blending severely affects both the shape and colour measurements. Therefore, reliable deblending algorithms will be essential to the success of the LSST.
Deblending is also important in other fields of research, such as skin cancer detection. Moles on the skin which could be malignant can overlap with hair, freckles, other skin defects and many more skin features. This overlap, just like in galaxy blends, influences the observed colour and shape, both of which are important features for classifying dangerous skin lesions. In collaboration with the LUMC, aside from the astronomy topic of my research, I will develop a pipeline for detecting and deblending skin lesions with smartphone imagery.