Training:TCON 07 27 05

Participants: Randy Gollub (MGH), Martha Shenton (BWH), Guido Gerig (UNC), Ross Whitaker (Utah), Steve Pieper (BWH), Sonia Pujol (BWH).

Wishlist from the team for 2005-2006 Training activities

• More Hands-on training in neurosciences for computer scientists.
• More didactic sessions in image acquisition and analysis for clinicians.

For both of these we agreed upon the follow approach: Implement immediately during Workshops and the AHM for NAMIC community and begin the more difficult task of envisioning how to deliver this more broadly during our next T-cons and at the AHM.

• 'Grand challenge' oriented training sessions; use concrete examples of tasks that need to be done to organize the educational materials. Examples include: for clinicians learning to use Slicer teach them how to segment the hippocampus (how to select the correct segmentation algorithm, how to use it, how to check for accuracy etc, for image analysis software developers teach them how to match an algorithm with image data that is compatible by knowing how to select acquisition parameters.

• DTI-structural MRI-fMRI co-registration- need Cores 1 and 3 to work out methods that we can teach

• Agreed that Core 5 would and should participate in the effort and intellectual planning for quality control and benchmarking of NAMIC Toolkit software for image analysis (along with Cores 1 and 3). Several Core 5 investigators have experience or interest, Martha Shenton’s Core 3 people (Sylvain and Mark Needhammermight) might also participate. This topic will be brought to the attention of Ron Kikinis and the Core 1 investigators by all Core 5 folks.

Action Items:

• Schedule planning session with all Core 5 team members during AHM session
• Offer to Ron Kikinis that the Training Core would like to sponsor an invited expert speaker to give a plenary talk on DTI and who would then participate in smaller groups seminar type educational programs at the February 2006 AHM.
• Addition of a didactic neurosciences session to all Programmers weeks to be taught by Randy and any others who are interested.

Training website

NA-MIC Training webpage will gather materials from Core 5 team members following the example of the on-line Compendium on Computer Vision CVonline. We agreed to work on this jointly, Sonia has already set up initial format, now all of us need to make contributions Training Materials.

Travel budget

The projected surplus travel funds are not needed to support NAMIC trainees to attend meetings. The team instead endorsed the great suggestion to sponsor an invited lecturer at the NA-MIC AHM (see above).

Workshop suggestions

• 2005: Association of University Radiologists (AUR) - MICCAI, BIRN AHM (see BIRN AHM Freesurfer&Slicer Workshop)
• 2006: Society for Neurosciences, Human Brain Mapping, ISMRM, MICCAI, RSNA

The content for these workshops will be planned at our next T-con see below.

Design of a unified workshop format

1. Access to NA-MIC Training Toolkit
2. Users Tutorial and Training sessions
3. Grand Challenges

Next TCON Friday November, 18 at 12:00 pm EST