Review MIC Festival 2024
Modern Medical Imaging and the corresponding analyses increasingly require multidisciplinary approaches to “connect the dots” for reliable medical prognosis and diagnosis. This year's festival focused on fostering the exchange between disciplines and served as a venue to meet, discuss ideas and initiate collaborations with diverse researchers and industry partners. There were plenty of opportunities to network including poster presentations with a new public voting scheme for the best poster, 5 interactive hands-on sessions and an explicitly for the festival created “connecting the dots” game.
The entirely novel centered stage setup with a new spot-light talk format guided the attention to the 12 amazing speakers, with wonderful presentations to mention a few: presentations on intramural habitats in breast cancer, autonomous treatment planning for image-guided prostate radiotherapy, talks about fully annotated dataset for nuclei instance segmentation or advances in quantifying our retinal layers in case of geographic atrophy.
The new format project team talk was another highlight of this MIC festival. Here, the aim was to highlight the multidisciplinarity in research projects by inviting four speakers from different disciplines, who work on the same topic and present their perspectives and how they work together. We were glad to have Barbara Kiesel, Gilbert Hangel, Ivo Rausch and Wolfgang Bogner as speakers for the GLIOMA focused project. Additionally, for the collaborative research project on high-risk breast cancer, we welcomed Maria Bernathova, Yen Tan, Zsuzsanna Bago-Horvath, and Philipp Seeböck.
The meeting featured a keynote lecture by Guy Arie Amichay, a postdoctoral researcher currently at Northwestern University (US) whose research focus is on modelling and analyzing real-world examples of synchronization phenomena. He provided us with wonderful insight into the building blocks of nature and how those units coordinate to form a cohesive whole, such as an organ, and showed us how to model emergent patterns of schooling fish and fireflies.
How does DIVERSITY meet multidisciplinarity in Imaging? - This was a very tricky question during the discussion with our three renown panelists: Claudia Kuntner-Hannes - MIC Assistant Professor at MedUni Wien, Baubak Bajoghli - Director at Austrian BioImaging and Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar - Postdoctoral Research @QIMP at MedUniWien. The discussion pointed out the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in medical imaging as well as the exchange between different cultures and age groups to enable innovative imaging solutions and progress in the field. Baubak Bajoghli conducted a live survey during the panel, highlighting the gap between the willingness and ability to share medical imaging data, since 98% of participants expressed a desire to share image data in a public repository, but only 56% did it in the end. He pointed out how Euro-BioImaging, with its national nodes, such as Austrian BioImaging/CMI, supports researchers in solving this issue.
Congratulations to our MIC Festival 2024 Award Winners:“Connecting the Dots Game” Award goes to Giuseppe Morgese from the Computational Imaging Research Lab (top right), the best poster award goes to Öyukü Özer from the Experimental Nuclear Medicine Lab at the Division of Nuclear Medicine (bottom, left) and the best presentation award to Silvester Bartsch from the Preclinical Imaging Lab (bottom, right).
This wonderful MIC Festival 2024 concluded with a social networking event with BBQ, inspiring discussions and excitement for the next MIC Festival, which will be happening on 12th of June 2025. Save the date!
Through engaging conversations, idea exchanges on various topics, and playful interactions that encouraged networking, we grew individually and collectively. This created a shared pulse and rhythm that bonded us together. This vibrancy and collaboration were compelling and resonated with the core spirit of the Cluster idea.
We truly experienced what it feels like when multiple disciplines collaborate for the benefit of the patient, strengthening both expertise and collaboration.
By the end of the evening, it was clear to us: This is the path we want to continue on! Together! Supportively! Strengthening each other!
All photos by Elisabeth Dworschak.