‘Grand Challenge’ at SPIE Medical Imaging

Attendees at the Computer-Aided Diagnosis conference at SPIE Medical Imaging – as well as scientists throughout the world – will help create and disseminate advanced quantitative image-analysis systems for diagnosing malignant lung nodules with computed tomography (CT) and improved computer-aided diagnosis. This “SPIE-AAPM-NCI Lung Nodule Classification Challenge,” is expected to yield advances in computer-aided diagnosis and, ultimately, in precision medicine.

Training-set cases were released in November 2014. Test datasets will be released 9 January 2015, and test-set classification results will be due 6 February 2015.

Results will be presented and discussed at SPIE Medical Imaging.

Other technical events at SPIE Medical Imaging, 21-26 February in Orlando, FL (USA), include the following workshops:

• Uncertainties in the Medical Imaging Chain

• Novel Robots for Less Invasive Surgery

• Imaging Genetics

• Radiology for the Non-Radiologist

• Live demonstrations by systems and algorithm developers for computer-aided diagnostics

• Power of pathology: predicting disease aggressiveness from tissue slides

In addition, a panel of experts will explore “CAD Grand Challenge-Present and Future.”

This year’s plenary speaker, Douglas L. Packer of the Mayo Clinic (USA) will discuss his translational work on the mechanisms of atrial fibrillation and/or cardiac arrhythmias. Packer’s clinical work investigates the development of new energy sources for the medication of cardiac tissue.

Eliot Siegel of the University of Maryland Medical Center (USA) will give a keynote presentation on “Big Data,” currently one of the hottest topics in medicine from a research and clinical perspective. Big Data is described as encompassing four Vs — volume, velocity, variety, and veracity.

In his keynote presentation, SPIE Member Mark Anastasio of Washington University in St. Louis (USA), will review the advancements in practical image-reconstruction approaches for photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) as well as applications of PACT to transcranial brain imaging and breast-cancer detection.

Other keynote speakers include:

• Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood, IBM Almaden Research Center (USA)

• David Mankoff, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

• Jason R. Swedlow, University of Dundee (UK)

• Mike Fitzpatrick, Vanderbilt University (USA)

• Dianne Georgian-Smith, Harvard Medical School (USA)

• Daniel Sodickson, New York University School of Medicine (USA)

• Ulysses G. J. Balis, University of Michigan Health System (USA)

Symposium chairs for SPIE Medical Imaging are SPIE members David Manning of Lancaster University (UK) and Steven C. Horii, of University of Pennsylvania Health System (USA).

More information: spie.org/MI.

• Have a question or comment about this article? Write to us at spieprofessional@spie.org.
• To receive a print copy of SPIE Professional, the SPIE member magazine, become an SPIE member.