MICCAI AIIIMA Workshop Description

There have been many advances in the use infrared imaging for medical applications in recent years. Infrared imaging comprises near-infrared, mid-wave infrared and long wave infrared spectrum. In the first ever AIIIMA workshop, more focus is given for long wave infrared imaging, in other words, thermal imaging. In the last two decades, infrared thermal imaging hardware devices have improved in thermal sensitivity by orders of magnitude (0.8 to 0.02 deg C) and recent research explorations have unearthed multiple clinical use cases and medical applications for thermal imaging. This non-contact, non-invasive radiation-free low-cost portable modality offers several advantages over other imaging modalities to patient monitoring applications in general. Furthermore, since thermal images have some unique imaging characteristics with inbuilt anonymity and opportunity to analyze in both thermal and imaging feature space, it has sparked considerable interest in several research communities. A simple pubmed search with the combination of words ‘Thermal imaging ’ and ‘Medical’ results in over 5000 articles just in the last decade. This surge of applications is 10 times higher when compared to the publications on thermal imaging during 2000-2010. We are also starting to see innovative startups creating breakthrough solutions leveraging this emerging trend of advanced medical infrared thermology and use of novel machine learning algorithms over the captured thermal images. We believe it is time to create a forum to discuss this specific sub-topic at MICCAI and promote this novel area of research among the research community that has the potential to hugely impact our society.

Some specific clinical applications of Infrared Imaging are seen in screening, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, such as breast cancer, skin cancer, oral cancer and others. Utility in evaluating skeletomuscular issues such as rheumatoid arthritis, vascular complications such as detecting early onset of diabetic foot and river blindness (parasites under the skin) or even respiratory abnormalities such as pneumonia and COVID-19.  The patient monitoring applications include treatment monitoring during neoadjuvant chemotherapy, acupuncture, cryotherapy and pain management.  A focused discussion on the topic of machine analysis of  medical Infrared Imaging can help create new radiomic biomarkers that can help in several such clinical use cases.