AI and Digital Microscopy

25-26 June 2018, University of Exeter, Exeter.

A two-day multidisciplinary meeting centred on application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods in Digital Microscopy will be held at the University of Exeter on 25-26 June, 2018. The meeting is hosted as part of the project "Novel context-based segmentation algorithms for intelligent microscopy", funded by the EPSRC at the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter.

Rationale

Digital microscopy and image processing have revolutionised many analytical approaches to the analysis of cells and tissues, and contributed to resolving a wide range of problems, from experimental cell research to cancer diagnosis. However automated interpretation of image contents remains an important challenge. This is where AI could provide formal techniques and algorithms (such as spatial logics, constraint-based methods, explicit ontologies and machine learning algorithms) to represent, encode and mechanically reason about information and interpret the contents of histological images. This is essential to support expert observers, provide quantitative approaches (for reproducible results) and free users from performing otherwise repetitive tasks to achieve the goal of fast, reproducible and quantitative analytical methods.

Images in digital microscopy range from small, single field captures to ‘whole slide images’ typically requiring gigabytes of memory to process, and this represents a further challenge in finding ways to efficiently represent and encode information that is relevant to the histological models used to interpret them.

This multidisciplinary meeting aims to provide a unique opportunity for networking, discussing problems, sharing and showcasing AI techniques that are directly related to the processing of microscopy digital images for a new generation of intelligent cytological and histopathological analyses.

Date and Venue