The MICCAI Society is a professional organization for scientists in the areas of

Medical Image Computing Medical image computing (MIC) is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of computer science, information engineering, electrical engineering, physics, mathematics and medicine. This field develops computational and mathematical methods fo ...

and Computer Assisted Interventions. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of these fields, the society brings together researchers from several scientific disciplines. including

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrate ...

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, and

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

. The society is best known for its annual flagship event, The MICCAI Conference, which facilitates the publication and presentation of original research on MICCAI-related topics. However, the society provides endorsements and sponsorships for several scientific events each year.

History

In 1998, three international conferences: Visualization in Biomedical Computing (VBC), Computer Vision and Virtual Reality in Robotics and Medicine (CVRMed), and Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery (MRCAS) merged into a single conference entitled "The International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions" (abbreviated MICCAI) with its first edition in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. The MICCAI Society was founded in 2004 by several active members of this research community and former chairs of the MICCAI conference. In 2009, the society introduced the "MICCAI Fellow" award to recognize senior members who had made substantial contributions to the MICCAI community. 12 fellows were elected in 2009 and three additional fellows are elected each year. New MICCAI Fellows are announced each year at the Annual MICCAI Conference. Since 2012, the society is involved in several events each year outside of the annual conference through endorsements and/or sponsorships. These include a number of smaller international conferences, MICCAI-focused workshop sessions at related conferences, and educational programs such as "summer schools".

Research focus

Medical Image Computing

Medical Image Computing (the "MIC" in MICCAI) is the field of study involving the application of image processing and computer vision to medical imaging. The goals of medical image computing tasks are diverse, but some common examples are

computer-aided diagnosis Computer-aided detection (CADe), also called computer-aided diagnosis (CADx), are systems that assist doctors in the interpretation of medical images. Imaging techniques in X-ray, MRI, Endoscopy, and ultrasound diagnostics yield a great deal o ...

image segmentation In digital image processing and computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple image segments, also known as image regions or image objects ( sets of pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simpli ...

of anatomical structures and/or abnormalities, and the

registration Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

or "alignment" of medical images acquired through different means or at different points in time.

Computer Assisted Interventions

Computer Assisted Interventions (the "CAI" in MICCAI) is the field of study concerned with the use of computational tools in medical interventions. Prominent examples of computer aided interventions currently in widespread use include image guided

biopsy A biopsy is a medical test commonly performed by a surgeon, interventional radiologist, or an interventional cardiologist. The process involves extraction of sample cells or tissues for examination to determine the presence or extent of a dise ...

and robot-assisted surgery. Integral to this research area is effective human-computer interaction and

user interface design User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the ...

Subgroups

Within the MICCAI community, a number of organizations have emerged to represent and advocate for certain populations of MICCAI researchers. Among these are the MICCAI Student Board and the Women in MICCAI Committee.

MICCAI Student Board

The MICCAI Student Board began in 2010 when MICCAI initiated its

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

presence by creating a

facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

group. This effort was championed by student researchers who used the group to organize events specifically for students at the 2011 and 2012 annual conferences. After the 2012 event, the MICCAI board of directors formally recognized the MICCAI student board as a part of the society and began providing support for the student board's annual events.

Women in MICCAI Committee

The Women in MICCAI Committee began as a series of networking sessions for female researchers within the medical image analysis research community during the 2015 MICCAI conference and the 2016

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging. In October 2016, the MICCAI board of directors approved a measure to create the "Women in MICCAI Committee" with the goal of strengthening the representation of female scientists in this research area. Since its inception, the Women in MICCAI Committee has continued to organize networking sessions in conjunction with MICCAI events. It also developed and maintains several online platforms for discussion on

. The committee is the primary interface between the MICCAI board of directors and the community of women researchers in MICCAI.

Annual MICCAI conference

Conference format

MICCAI conferences are typically scheduled for five days, of which the first and last days set aside for ''satellite events'' consisting of

tutorials A tutorial, in education, is a method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture, a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete ...

, workshops, and challenges. Those include the Brain lesion workshop (BrainLes), the Workshop on Interpretability of Machine Intelligence in Medical Image Computing (iMIMIC), the Workshop on Domain Adaptation and Representation Transfer (DART), the International Workshop on Multimodal Brain Image Analysis (MBIA), and others. The main conference includes invited presentations, panel discussions, and podium and poster presentations of original research papers which are published by Springer Nature as conference proceedings.

Past MICCAI conferences

Upcoming MICCAI conferences

Publications

The MICCAI

conference proceeding In academia and librarianship, conference proceedings is a collection of academic papers published in the context of an academic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the conferen ...

s consist of full-length papers which undergo comprehensive

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

. Since even before the merger of the CVRMed, MRCAS, and VBC conferences (see

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

), the proceedings of the annual conference have been published by Springer Nature as part of the

Lecture Notes in Computer Science ''Lecture Notes in Computer Science'' is a series of computer science books published by Springer Science+Business Media since 1973. Overview The series contains proceedings, post-proceedings, monographs, and Festschrifts. In addition, tutorial ...

(LNCS) series. In addition to the proceedings of the annual conference, MICCAI officially partners with two peer reviewed

scientific journals In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...

: "Medical Image Analysis" published by

Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as '' The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', ...

and " The International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery" (IJCARS) published by Springer Nature. These journals loosely correspond to the "MIC" and "CAI" focuses of the MICCAI Society respectively, but they have substantial overlap in subject matter. The MICCAI Society also partners with Elsevier to develop a series of books on MICCAI-related research, written by scientists in the MICCAI research community. , nine books have been published in this series

References

External links

The MICCAI Society Website
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