MICCAI 2024: Call for Challenges
Tuesday 12th December 2023
MICCAI challenges have become an integral part of the MICCAI conference. Their aim is to provide a fair benchmarking environment for different methodological solutions to a common problem. Challenges should address a well-defined open problem relevant to MICCAI, provide high-quality data for training and testing algorithms, and define a clear assessment procedure. Examples of topics from previous challenges include segmentation, registration, computer-aided detection and diagnosis, endoscopic vision, and brain connectivity. Proposals related to accessible, fair, responsible, and translational healthcare are particularly welcome. Since the conference will be held for the first time on the African continent, challenge proposals addressing clinical use cases that are relevant to global health and affordable medical imaging are particularly welcome.
Challenge format
Challenges will take place on October 6th and 10th, 2024. Each challenge may be organized as a half-day or a full-day event. Challenge sessions may be designed as oral / poster presentations of the results that each participant achieved prior to the conference and/or hands-on competitions during the event. MICCAI supports open data; hence, we encourage the organizers to use open-source data licenses and/or keep the challenge open to submissions beyond the conference, providing a sustained platform for benchmarking.
In addition, there is the possibility of an early submission of challenge proposals for sessions to be held at MICCAI 2025.
Submission process
Either the lead organizer or at least one other organizing team member should be a MICCAI Society member at the time of submission.([miccai.wildapricot.org](https://miccai.wildapricot.org/)) In case all of the challenge organizers are from underserved countries and unable to support the membership fees, please indicate this on the submission form as there will be a further communication process.
Challenge submissions will be handled by a structured process to ensure completeness of the information for a high-quality challenge review, as well as structured access to challenge information in the future. The submission process entails two steps:
- Prepare the challenge design by providing at least 90% of the challenge parameters and submitting it to the structured submission system.
- Submit the generated and unchanged challenge design (pdf) to the review platform (CMT).
Note: Uploading a challenge design document to CMT that is incomplete or different from the one generated with the structured preparation system will lead to a desk rejection of the challenge.
Review process
The submitted challenge proposals will be selected based on the following criteria:
● potential scientific, economic, and social impact;
● expected interest in the topic by the MICCAI audience;
● quality of the challenge design.
At least two reviewers will provide feedback and assist the challenge organizing committee in making a final decision. To ensure a rich and diverse program, we reserve the right to ask the applicants of proposals with substantial overlaps to merge or alter their scopes. We also reserve the right to ask applicants to provide supplementary materials and to revise their proposals, in order to ensure the quality and standard of the MICCAI challenges. Upon acceptance of the challenge, the complete design of the challenge will be registered (Zenodo) before it takes place. Changes to the design (e.g., to the metrics or ranking schemes) must be well-justified and officially re-registered.
Copyright
Authors will assign to the MICCAI Society the right to distribute challenge materials (such as the agenda or the challenge design document) to MICCAI members and to challenge and conference attendees, independently of the copyright ownership planned by the challenge organizers.
Budget
The MICCAI 2024 Organising Committee is currently actively seeking sponsors to financially support the organization of challenges (e.g., evaluation platform costs), as well as the participation (including traveling and registration) for organizers and speakers, from the African continent and more broadly from underserved and underrepresented groups. All organizers and speakers who plan to attend a MICCAI 2024 Challenge in which they are involved are expected to register for the event.
Important dates
Challenge proposals due: 18 January 2024
First round of feedback and early decisions: 16 February 2024
Revised challenge proposals due: 23 February 2024
Final notification of acceptance: 1 March 2024
Individual challenge websites opening: 1 April 2024
(All times are 23:59 Pacific Time)