Abstract

There has been an explosion of interest in applying artificial intelligence to health care in general, but it is in medical imaging where the most progress has been made towards clinical translation. In radiology and pathology, AI algorithms have the potential to address several pressing issues. There is a global shortage of qualified radiologists and pathologists, and AI-powered solutions are needed to reduce reporting workloads by automating routine tasks, flagging potential abnormalities in medical images, and making the reporting workflow more efficient. AI assistance can also make more effective use of limited resources; for example, software can guide healthcare workers to carry out ultrasound scans with minimal training, and AI guided reconstruction algorithms can help to reduce the time taken to scan each patient.  Despite some successes, there are still many barriers to overcome before AI reaches its full potential. In this talk I will delve into the challenges faced when translating research lab-developed algorithms into clinical settings and offer insights into potential solutions. 

Bio

Anne Martel is a Professor in Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, a Senior Scientist and Tory Family Chair in Oncology at Sunnybrook Research Institute. She is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute, Toronto and a member of the Researcher Council for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Her research program is focused on medical image and digital pathology analysis, particularly on applications of machine learning for segmentation, diagnosis, and prediction/prognosis and she has over 160 publications with more than 5000 citations in this field.

Dr. Martel is an active member of the medical image analysis community. She is a fellow of the MICCAI (Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention) Society which represents engineers and computer scientists working in this field and served as board member from 2017-2021.  She has served as a general co-chair, scientific co-chair and educational chair for several MICCAI conferences and has also served as a program committee member for many SPIE and MICCAI conferences., Dr Martel is currently on the editorial board of the journal Medical Image Analysis and previously served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions in Medical Imaging. In 2006 she co-founded Pathcore (Toronto, ON), a software company developing complete workflow solutions for digital pathology.