MedImage 2014 at the 9th Indian Conference on Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing

The 3rd edition of the day-long workshop MedImage 2014 was held December 2014 at the 9th Indian Conference on Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing (ICVGIP) organized at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore, India. The workshop showcased work-in-progress, review of prior work and industry presentation sessions related to medical image computing, analysis, visualization, informatics, computer aided diagnosis and clinical translation. Chaired by Dr. Jayanthi Sivaswamy from IIIT Hyderabad, India and Dr. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay from IIT Kharagpur, India, the workshop provided individuals and groups from academia and industry a networked forum to present their research problems and get them reviewed in an open forum. The workshop included invited talks in areas in medical image computing. Prof. Guido Gerig from the University of Utah, USA, spoke about his work on spatio-temporal statistical shape analysis of brain development using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Dr. Phaneendra Yalavarthy from IISc, Bangalore, India, spoke about his work in progress on creating the healthy Indian brain atlas using MRI scans. Prof. Anand Rangarajan from the University of Florida, USA, spoke about his work on shape complex segmentation, Schrödinger distance transform functions, Fisher-Rao geometry and interactive visualization for understanding neuro-anatomical development using MRI scans. Prof. Kaleem Siddiqui from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, spoke about his work with modeling of texture flows, tactography, moving frame texture fields, generalized helicoid models for understanding the myofibre bundling and heart wall formation process in developmental biology.
The work-in-progress included presentations on digital pathology for cancerous cell detection in microscopic investigation of blood smear; medical software development for diffusion kurtosis imaging for MRI; method for speckle suppression and contrast enhancement in ultrasonic images using the non-local patch similarity based approach; video magnification for disclosing thoracic movements during human respiration; improved retinal blood vessel segmentation; and image analysis methods for diagnosis of retinopathy of prematurity. A showcase with review of earlier published work on computational imaging for patient-comfort-centric in situ histology in realtime being undertaken by Dr. Debdoot Sheet from IIT Kharagpur, India and Dr. Amin Katouzian from the Technical University of Munich, Germany was also presented.
The industry session was represented by General Electric (GE) where Dr. Bipul Das from GE Healthcare, Bangalore, India, showcased the company’s footprint in the medical imaging and image analysis sector and work in their Development Centre in India. Siemens Corporate Technology, Bangalore, India, was represented by Dr. Amit Kale who showcased his company’s focus on developing frugal and affordable solutions for the Indian and developing world healthcare market. Imec was represented by Dr. Ichcha Manipur though Imec-India, Bangalore, showcasing Imec-India’s promising technology on high-speed single chip based hyper-spectral imaging solution being used for microscopy based pathological diagnosis of tuberculosis using sputum smears.
The workshop concluded with a panel discussion and brainstorming session on the future of medical image processing and analysis and developments in Indian industry, including discussion of organizing meetings like MedImage at regular intervals as well as closer Industry-Academic interaction at such meetings and beyond to quicken the pace of developments in the field, especially for developing solutions relevant to the Indian context. More details about the event are available on the MedImage website.