Bruno Silva and Marcos Fernández-Rodríguez, two PhD students at the ICVS in the surgical sciences and allied technology (SS&AT) research team, obtained three prestigious awards at the MICCAI 2024 international conference held in Marrakesh from the 6th to 10th of October for Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention.
Marcos Fernández-Rodríguez and Bruno Silva work in introducing Artificial Intelligence technology into laparoscopy procedures, developing and using deep learning algorithms to improve surgical sciences. Marcos Fernández-Rodríguez has been awarded as the winner of the SegSTRONG-C sub-challenge. This challenge addressed the issue of improving Deep Learning models robustness for surgical tool segmentation, when facing the typical corruptions present in the laparoscopy procedures, increasing confidence on the model results. The awardee mentioned that this is “an important award for me, as this distinction is like an affirmation of the work I am doing and gives me confidence to continue applying and developing my ideas.”
Bruno Silva has been awarded 1st place in both 3D tracking accuracy and 2D tracking latency at the STIR sub-challenge. His work tackled the complex task of accurately tracking points in stereo laparoscopic videos, with the added challenge of achieving near-real-time performance in 2D tracking. “On a personal level, I was very happy to achieve this award as it proves that my work is on the right track for real-world applications. The fact that we were surrounded by renowned people in this area gave us the opportunity for networking and showing the relevance of our institution to the community”, highlights the researcher.
For the researchers these recognitions are not just personal achievements but also mark significant advancements in the fields of surgical sciences and computer-assisted interventions and they would like to extend a huge thank you to the challenge organizers and to their generous sponsors—Intuitive, ImFusion, and Nvidia—whose prizes, valued at around 25,000 USD (including two monetary prizes and a cutting-edge IGX Orin Developer Kit with an RTX 6000 Ada GPU), are invaluable in supporting innovation and inspiring us to continue pushing the boundaries of research.
