Mar 19 2019
Cees Snoek and Marcel Worring, UvA professors, are launching a new public-private research lab in collaboration with scientists from the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence Ltd. from the United Arab Emirates, headed by Professor Ling Shao.
(Image credit: University of Amsterdam)
In the new AIM lab, the focus of the scientists will be to use artificial intelligence for medical image analysis. The lab will be part of ICAI, the national Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence, stationed at Amsterdam Science Park.
Medical practice mandates the interpretation of an increased number of digital images. Human experts cost more, are prone to error, and get easily tired. Latest advancements in image recognition, specifically through “deep learning,” have demonstrated that computers can extract an increased amount of information from images and are at times more dependable when compared to people due to their enhanced precision. But the main focus of image recognition is day-to-day images like those that can be found on YouTube and Instagram.
Adapting and further developing image recognition to the characteristics of medical images is an important challenge for the AIM Lab. From a technical perspective, work will be done on fundamental and relatively general AI models and algorithms that can be applied to specific diseases.
Cees Snoek, Scientific Director, AIM Lab.
AI for Faster Diagnosis
For five years to come, seven PhD researchers will perform studies in the lab on projects that will deal with, apart from other things, on realizing a more rapid diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, modeling cardiac rhythms, and on producing automatic reports based on X-ray images.
The AIM Lab is the seventh lab to form part of ICAI. AIRlab Amsterdam (a joint industry lab with Ahold Delaize), the National Police Lab (partnership between UvA, Utrecht University, and the National Police), and Elsevier AI Lab (collaboration between UvA, VU University Amsterdam, and Elsevier) were formed over the past one year.