Wiki page for 2013 Preliminary Draft

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Required elements of the New Research Progress Template

1. RESEARCH AND RESOURCE METRICS

1A. Summary of Center Progress

• Brief description of overall objectives of NA-MIC

The National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary community of computer scientists, software engineers, and medical investigators who share the common goal of improving healthcare through the development of computational tools for the analysis and visualization of medical image data. The Center maintains a robust and flexible infrastructure for developing and applying advanced imaging technologies across a range of important biomedical research disciplines. The NA-MIC research and development effort is organized around the Computer Science Core, which includes independent teams for Algorithms and Engineering. A separate core is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the NA-MIC Kit, an interoperable suite of software tools that enables Center technologies. NA-MIC's research effort is currently driven by 4 DBPs, which are finding solutions to problems in patient-specific data analysis. Center resesarch and technology is being further developed through XX collaborative research projects.

• Brief outline indicating strengths of NA-MIC as a national resource

[take from NA-MIC impact statement, August 2012]

• Summarize progress made in each Research and Core Project.

• Driving Biological Projects

1The Center worked synergistically with the Driving Biological Projects (DBPs) to achieve fundamental advances in shape representation, shape analysis, groupwise registration, diffusion estimation, segmentation and quantification, functional estimation, distortion correction, and clustering.

• Discuss at least 3 Collaborative Research Projects (these may include collaborating R01/R21s or other projects not directly funded by the Center's NCBC grant, but using Center tools or algorithms in a substantial and enabling manner.

Collaboration 1: TBA Collaboration 2: TBA Collaboration 3: TBA

• Brief description of new training and outreach activities conducted during reporting interval (7/1/2012 - 6/30/2013). Provide web-links if available.

Sonia Pujol: Please update and revised. This year NA-MIC hosted XX workshops and courses at national universities and international venues, providing training and exposure to medical researchers in 3D Slicer and other NA-MIC technologies. NA-MIC also xxxx launched the first DTI Tractography Challenge for Neurosurgical Planning at the XXth International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2011) conference in Toronto, Canada, demonstrating its continued commitment to validation. The purpose of the validation effort is to assess the performance of NA-MIC algorithms in a variety of settings.

• Impact of Center (i) on biomedical research and research training and outreach at our institution (BWH) and (i) broader scientific community. Institutional benefits might include, organization of special courses and meetings, attraction of students, and faculty participation. Scientific community benefits may include software released, workshops organized, collaborations established, service performed, technology developed, and technology disseminated through patents, publications, peer-reviewed citations of center collaborations by non-center investigators, and personnel trained.

Provide a Center Summary Table

 Progress made by innovation and image analysis , and scientific CoresResearch CoresThe scientific development is driven by 4 DBPs.  In

addition to activities that sustain the NA-MIC Kit and integrity of the Center’s software infrastructure, NA-MIC has an impressive outreach program that delivers software, data, and innovative science to the broader biomedical community through its publications and training venues. NA-MIC also has instituted a unique validation effort where software developers and end-users participate in hands-on workshops to measure and improve medical image algorithms.

Required elements:

Finally, this year saw the release of Slicer version 4.0 and 4.1 (Slicer4) which represents a

significant advance in capabilities and underlying technologies. The software was released at RSNA 2011 in November. As in past years, a detailed presentation of current work was made at the All Hands Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, January 9-13, 2012, and can be viewed in detail on the NA-MIC Wiki [http://wiki.namic. org/Wiki/index.php/ 2012_Winter_Project_Week]. This represents the 8th Annual Progress Report and second year of the second cycle of funding. The report includes Highlights and Impact statements, individual progress reports from the four DBPs (Atrial Fibrillation, Huntington’s Disease, Adaptive Radiotherapy for Head and Neck Cancer, and Traumatic Brain Injury), a science and technology summary from the Computer Science Core (Algorithms, Engineering, and NA-MIC Kit), and a review of Training activities, including the validation effort. The report concludes with a bibliography of 33 peer-reviewed journal articles and 21 peer-reviewed conference reports and the annual recommendations of the External Advisory Board, which met on January 12, 2012 in Salt Lake City, coincident with Winter Project Week.