Computer Vision News - December 2016

Every month, Computer Vision News reviews a challenge related to our field. If you do not take part in challenges, but are interested to know the new methods proposed by the scientific community to solve them, this section is for you. This month we have chosen to review the Cancer Metastasis Detection in Lymph Nodes Challenge , organized around ISBI 2016, which was held earlier this year in Prague: Cancer Metastasis Detection in Lymph Nodes . The website of the challenge, with all its related resources, is here . Background The Cancer Metastasis Detection in Lymph Nodes (CAMELYON16), was designed to evaluate new and existing algorithms for automated detection of micro- and macro-metastases in H&E (hematoxylin and eosin) stained whole-slide images of lymph node sections. This is the first challenge using whole-slide images in histopathology and it will run for two years: 2016 and 2017. Motivation This task is of crucial medical importance: cancer can spread to distant parts of the body , spreading via the walls of lymph nodes or blood vessels. When this happens, it is called metastatic cancer . Lymph node metastases occur in most cancer types (e.g. breast, prostate, colon/rectum). Lymph nodes are small glands that filter lymph, the fluid that circulates through the lymphatic system. The lymph nodes in the underarm are the first place breast cancer is likely to spread. Metastatic involvement of lymph nodes is one of the most important prognostic variables in breast cancer. Once cancer spreads, it can be hard to control: chances for successful treatment are lower when cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. However, the diagnostic procedure for pathologists is tedious, time- consuming and susceptible to misinterpretation. Therefore, a successful solution to this challenge would hold great promise to reduce the workload of the pathologists while at the same time reduce the subjectivity and the costs of diagnosis. The 2016 challenge focuses on sentinel lymph nodes of breast cancer patients: a sentinel lymph node is defined as the first lymph node to which cancer cells are most likely to spread from a primary tumor. The challenge provides a large dataset from the Radboud University Medical Center and the University Medical Center in Utrecht (both in the Netherlands). Challenge 28 Computer Vision News Challenge CAMELYON16 - from ISBI 2016