XAI Winter School 2025
Dates: January 6-10, 2025
Place: the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno, Czech republic & the Medical University of Graz, Austria
From January 6 to 10, 2025, the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno and the Medical University of Graz will host a Winter School focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital pathology. This specialized program offers participants a hands-on introduction to the latest advancements in AI, with a particular focus on its application in digital pathology.
Expert-led training on AI and Digital Pathology
Throughout the week, participants will attend lectures and practical sessions led by prominent experts in the field. These sessions will cover various topics, including the role of AI in assisting diagnoses, the importance of explainability in medical AI systems, and the certification processes required under the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR). Participants will also gain insight into preparing data for AI training, such as whole-slide images (WSIs), annotations, clinical and omics data, and data privacy considerations.
Hands-on experience in Brno and Graz
The program includes practical, hands-on sessions allowing participants to work directly with digital pathology data. Participants will practice scanning and saving WSIs, creating annotations, and extracting structured data from unstructured clinical data using advanced AI tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs). The week will conclude with a tour of the state-of-the-art digital pathology infrastructure at the Medical University of Graz.
What Will Participants Gain from the Winter School?
- Getting pathologists familiar with state-of-the-art in digital pathology
( Hands-on in Graz on entire digital pathology dept. ) - Getting pathologists familiar with the possibilities of different AI approaches - from assistance to diagnosis
- Getting familiar with explainability
- Getting familiar with IVDR & certification processes
- Training pathologists on how to prepare data for AI
WSIs - formats
WSI annotations - formats, semantics, SOPs
clinical data - extraction manual vs. NLP vs. LLMs
omics data - basic formats - Data privacy aspects - pseudonymized vs. anonymized data, types of contracts
Organizational aspects
1. Part - BRNO
The first part of the Winter School will take place from January 6 to 8, 2025, at the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno, where participants will focus on introductory sessions, AI use in digital pathology, and practical hands-on training.
>>> Transfer to Medical University Graz by train on Wednesday evening
2. part - GRAZ
On the evening of January 8, participants will travel by train to Medical University Graz, where the second part of the program will be held from January 9 to 10, 2025. In Graz, participants will experience a guided tour of the digital pathology infrastructure and gain additional practical insights.
Registration information
Registration takes place via the form. You can register until 15 December. After that time, registration will be closed.
The registered participants will receive an informative email regarding the organization and other details of the school at the latest by 20 December 2024.
Fees
Participation is free of charge.
Participants are expected to cover their travel and accommodation expenses.
Tentative Program
Monday [Brno]
- Introduction to digital pathology: advantages and disadvantages of going digital (Heimo Müller)
- Showcase of Graz: how digital pathology practically looks in a fully digital environment (Markus Plass)
- Showcase of Brno: how digital pathology practically looks in hybrid environments (Rudolf Nenutil)
- Introduction on use of AI in digital pathology: from assistance to diagnosis (Heimo Müller - possibly Frederick Klauschen)
- Introduction to explainability in AI in medical contexts: for clinicians (Heimo Müller)
- Data in digital pathology: WSIs, annotations, links to clinical data (Petr Holub/Markus Plass)
- Infrastructure to store and access data in digital pathology (Petr Holub/Markus Plass)
- including backup strategies if you go fully digital
- Data protection in digital pathology (Petr Holub)
- Intro to EMPAIA (Rasmus Kiehl)
Tuesday [Brno]
- Tour de pathology department at MMCI (Rudolf Nenutil/Michal Tichý)
- Use of annotations for AI - supervised and weakly supervised learning (Rudolf Nenutil)
- Consensus building on annotations for supervised learning
- Hands-on with digital pathology data
- Scanning and saving WSIs
- Tutorial on QuPath (Michal Tichý/Markus Plass)
- Tutorial on Halo AP/AI (Markus Plass)
- Tutors: Heimo Müller, Markus Plass, Emilian Jungwirth, Wael Al-Zoughbi, Michal Tichý
- Extraction of structured data from unstructured clinical data using NLP and AI (Aleš Horák)
Wednesday [>>>transfer to Graz]
- Wrap-up of the hands on: presentation of each group, what worked, what didn’t work, lessons learned
>>> afternoon transfer to Graz with direct train
- Dinner in Graz
Thursday [Graz]
- Tour of pathology at MUG
- Detailed showcase of digital pathology infrastructure at MUG
- Discussion session on what and how works, differences between Brno and Graz
- Tour of biobank
- Standardization in digital pathology
- IVDR certifications (Kurt Zatloukal)
- upcoming ISO standard for digital pathology (Kurt Zatloukal)
Friday [Graz]
- QM system in Graz (Peter Regintig)
- Future plans (Heimo Müller / Kurt Zatloukal)
- Implication of AI act
- implications of IVDR/MDR and ISO standardization
- Summary of the Winter School
- Finishing around 12:00