Context

Big and complex data is fuelling diverse research directions in both medical image analysis and computer vision research fields. These can be divided into two main categories: (1) analytical methods, and (2) predictive methods. While analytical methods aim to efficiently analyse, represent and interpret data (static or longitudinal), predictive methods leverage the data currently available to predict observations at later time-points (i.e., forecasting the future) or predicting observations at earlier time-points (i.e., predicting the past for missing data completion). For instance, a method which only focuses on classifying patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an analytical method, while a method which predicts if a subject diagnosed with MCI will remain stable or convert to AD over time is a predictive method. Similar examples can be established for various neurodegenerative or neuropsychiatric disorders, degenerative arthritis or in cancer studies, in which the disease/disorder develops over time.

Why predictive intelligence?

It would constitute a stunning progress in the MICCAI research community if, in a few years, we contribute to engineering a ‘predictive intelligence’ which can map both low-dimensional and high-dimensional medical data onto the future with high precision. This workshop is the first endeavor to drive the field of ‘high-precision predictive medicine’, where late medical observations are predicted with high precision, while providing explanation via machine and deep learning, and statistically, mathematically- or physically-based models of healthy, disordered development and ageing. Despite the terrific progress that analytical methods have made in the last twenty years in medical image segmentation, registration or other related applications, efficient predictive intelligent models/methods are somewhat lagging behind. As such predictive intelligence develops and improves —and this is likely to do so exponentially in the coming years— this will have far-reaching consequences for the development of new treatment procedures and novel technologies. These predictive models will begin to shed light on one of the most complex healthcare and medical challenges we have ever encountered, and, in doing so, change our basic understanding of who we are.

What kind of research problems we aim to solve?

The main aim of PRIME-MICCAI is to propel the advent of predictive models in a broad sense, with application to medical data. Particularly, the workshop will admit 12-page papers describing new cutting-edge predictive models and methods that solve challenging problems in the medical field. We hope that PRIME workshop becomes a nest for high-precision predictive medicine, one that is set to transform multiple fields of healthcare technologies in unprecedented ways.

Topics of interests include but are not limited to predictive methods dedicated to the following topics:

• Modeling and predicting disease development or evolution from a limited number of observations;
• Computer-aided prognostic methods (e.g., for brain diseases, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, dementia, acute disease, neurodevelopmental disorders);
• Forecasting disease/cancer progression over time;
• Predicting low-dimensional data (e.g., behavioral scores, clinical outcome, age, gender);
• Predicting the evolution or development of high-dimensional data (e.g., shapes, graphs, images, patches, abstract features, learned features);
• Predicting high-resolution data from low-resolution data;
• Prediction methods using 2D, 2D+t, 3D, 3D+t, ND and ND+t data;
• Predicting image modality from a different modality (e.g., data synthesis);
• Predicting lesion evolution;
• Predicting missing data (e.g., data imputation or data completion problems).
• Predicting clinical outcome from medical data (genomic, imaging data, etc).

In-brief

This workshop will mediate ideas from both machine learning and mathematical/statistical/physical modeling research directions in the hope to provide a deeper understanding of the foundations of predictive intelligence developed for medicine, as well as to where we currently stand and what we aspire to achieve through this field. PRIME-MICCAI 2021 will feature a single-track workshop with keynote speakers with deep expertise in high-precision predictive medicine using machine learning and other modeling approaches —which are believed to stand at opposing directions. Our workshop will also include technical paper presentations, poster sessions, and demonstrations. Eventually, this will help steer a wide spectrum of MICCAI publications from being ‘only analytical’ to being ‘jointly analytical and predictive’.