The Augmented Environments for Computer-assisted Interventions (AE-CAI) Workshop is the longest running workshop held at the MICCAI conferences. Originating in 2006, the 18th edition will be held on Satellite Event Day 1 (October 6). We spoke with Elvis Chen, Cristian Linte and other AE-CAI program committee members to gather their thoughts on this workshop and what has made it so successful.
Q. AE-CAI is MICCAI's longest running workshop, I believe this year will be your 18th year! What do you attribute to the longevity of this workshop?
Thanks for noticing, but who's counting, really? Indeed, the AE-CAI workshop, albeit several variations in name, has been running for a while now in some shape or form.
Let us start with a historical note for those less familiar with our journey: I believe it first started in 2006 in Copenhagen under the name of AMI-ARCS, which pointed to something along the lines of Augmented Medical Imaging and Augmented Reality for Computer-assisted Surgery, and it ran under that name for three more years, in (Brisbane (2007), New York (2008) and London (2009). The 2010 edition (Beijing) was co-hosted with the MIAR (Medical Imaging and Augmented Reality) conference. The workshop was then rebranded under its current name - AE-CAI (Augmented Environments for Computer-assisted Interventions) starting with its 2011 (Toronto) edition and it has been running under this name/acronym every year since, except for 2016, but that's a story for another time, as it required some "refreshments” But here is another memorable historical note that I bet not too many know about: the Mixed and Augmented Reality in Medicine book, edited by Peters, Linte, Yaniv and Williams and published by Taylor & Francis in 2019 was born out of the 2015 AE-CAI workshop when several of us decided to collect names and topics to, perhaps one day, put together a book - and about three years later, the book was published.
We believe the longevity of the workshop series has to do with several stars aligning. One of these stars is the workshop organizing team - some of us have been involved since the beginnings, more than a decade ago, and somehow have not yet got tired of it - but the team is important, as it speaks for the peer review, organization and timeliness, and authors appreciate well-organized and smoothly run conferences, and I believe our team has been able to deliver on this, with exceptional, timely organization.
Another star is the CAI community of MICCAI continuously seeking a venue for disseminating their research. back in the mid/late-2000s, augmented reality in medicine was gaining more popularity, and many CAI researchers started to venture into that domain. Nevertheless, despite its name, the workshop always welcomed and served as a home for a significant body of CAI research. While the CAI research used to be an integral part of MICCAI during its first 10 to 15 or even 18 years since its foundation in 1998, starting with the mid 2010s the focus of MICCAI, at least according to the perception of the CAI community and many CAI authors, started shifting further and further away from CAI, with only a select number of CAI papers being included in the program, especially as podium presentations. As a result, many CAI researchers turned to the AE-CAI workshop, that had been ongoing at the time, as their "preferred” CAI home within MICCAI. Hence, in a way, we sort of owe it to MICCAI's perceived shift away from CAI, which helped our workshop grow stronger in response to the CAI community submitting really good quality work.
Another attractive feature to many authors has been the publication venue: starting with the 2011 edition, the AE-CAI proceedings have been published in Springer's LNCS book series for five consecutive years, the same venue as MICCAI. Moreover, beginning with its 2017 edition, we have been fortunate to be invited by several peer reviewed journals to publish our proceedings as a Special Issue. This year's (2024) edition and its upcoming Special Issue in Wiley's Healthcare Technology Letters journal will constitute the 8th consecutive year of the AE-CAI proceedings being published in a traditional peer-reviewed journal venue.
Our high standards of peer review that we instituted and maintained, especially with now the proceedings being published in peer reviewed journal special issues, has been another attractive feature that has contributed to the longevity. The first stage of the review process is double-blinded (same as MICCAI), with three external reviewers and 2 meta-reviewers assigned to each paper. Following the first round of reviews, all authors must submit a detailed response to reviewers document and a revised manuscript, much like we do for journal articles. These revisions are then re-reviewed, and if additional revisions are necessary, the paper is sent back to the authors for another round. We learned that in order to maintain quality, the peer review process cannot be rushed, and the reviewer load needs to be maintained low. To that extent, we've been fortunate to have a reliable pool of reviewers, to whom we are very grateful, who are only assigned 1-2 papers, so they can submit thorough reviews. This has helped us maintain the high quality of the published proceedings and an overall acceptance rate of 50-60%, which is much stringent than many of the other MICCAI workshops or even conferences in the field.
Lastly, I am sure the generous sponsorship we have been receiving over the years from Northern Digital Inc (NDI) and Intuitive that has allowed us to recognize several papers each year with paper awards has also been attractive.
So to summarize, we believe the longevity of the AE-CAI workshop series is really a result of the team's long term commitment and dedication to the community, the trust we gained from the CAI community in response to maintaining high standards of peer review, the publication venue, and the paper award recognition thanks to our generous sponsors.
Q. You represent one of a very few workshops that are CAI focused at MICCAI 2024. Why did you choose this as an area of focus? How do you see Computer Assisted Intervention evolving in future?
Often, timing is everything. In a way, we got lucky and started early. Remember that back in 2006 when the first edition of AMI-ARCS was hosted, MICCAI was less than 10 years old and workshops and satellite events were very scarce. Besides that, going back to our beginnings, in a way we also got lucky to get onto the AR/VR/MR wagon when we did back in the mid-2000s, when augmented reality in medicine was buzzing. While it buzzed for a while, we were perceiving enough to realize that we needed to expand our scope and welcomed more traditional CAI and image-guided intervention work, much of which was no longer finding a home within the main MICCAI conference or other satellite events. So we did not choose this specific area for a reason, I guess the group that first started the workshop were working in this area and wanted to bring the (small at the time) community together, which grew over time and our workshop grew alongside the community.
As far as computer-assisted interventions, they've come a long way and while many of the techniques have been embraced, especially in orthopedic and neuro applications, other not as much. In the end, if a new tool or technique requires additional workload or effort from the user than traditional approaches, their adoption is unlikely. But even if often translation is unsuccessful, bits and pieces of the research end up plugging holes where least expected, in the context of other tools or applications not initially intended for. So as far as the future holds, we have more and more computing power, which enables faster and better quality imaging, and, as we all know AI and machine learning techniques have proved to be at least somewhat useful , so essentially there is a lot we can do in terms of application / tool development, nevertheless, the critical question to still ask is: Are these tools and techniques we're so proudly developing and validating and publishing relevant and helpful to their intended users? If it makes their life more difficult, the answer is no - and we believe the future of CAI hinges to a large extent on our ability to address this challenge.
Q. What advice would you give to someone considering organizing a workshop at MICCAI?
This is a tough one - we can tell you what worked 15 - 18 years ago when we started this, and what does not work now Some of us on the AE-CAI team have served on the MICCAI WS committee, as well as MICCAI Satellite Events Chair and it's pretty clear there is a lot of competition now to get a workshop accepted. Keep in mind that the satellite events at MICCAI have grown significantly, with more than half of the MICCAI attendees being there for the satellite events, mainly workshops, so the first and last day of the MICCAI show are getting really crowed, with several (20 +) workshops running in parallel each day, in addition to challenges and tutorials. In a way, perhaps it's time for MICCAI to be a bit more selective when making decision on the workshop (and other satellite events) submissions, or at least encourage workshops addressing related, common topics to join forces into a larger, healthier gig that brings people together rather than splitting them and making them choose, especially if the events run in parallel.
The AE-CAI workshop used to be its own event, but after a few years we joined forces with another ongoing workshop - CARE (Computer-assisted Robotic Endoscopy) and a few years later the OR 2.0 (Context-aware Operating Theatres). Together, we were able to build and grow a stringer community and a larger presence, as well as a richer and more diverse, yet converging program.
So as far as advice, for those looking to submit a new workshop proposal, first of all make sure there is a community interested in submitting / attending - this is critical, as otherwise there won't be any attendees, even if the workshop proposal is accepted. As far as the proposal itself, make sure you articulate why this specific, newly proposed workshop is relevant and worthy of selecting from among all the other proposals, some which have been running for years. This is becoming more and more difficult, as there are already too many workshops out there.
For those running ongoing workshops, as you know, it's a new game each year - a proposal needs to be submitted and it hopefully gets selected, no guarantee of course, even if the workshop has been running for some time. I guess the key here is to stay relevant and demonstrate that there is a community that relies on this workshop and authors that are eager to submit and contribute, who otherwise have no home. Also, being flexible helps, especially if asked to join forces with some other event - often another workshop or a relevant challenge.
We have been playing the game for many years now and each year we submit a proposal, and we know there is no guarantee of acceptance despite our longevity, but I guess our longevity and consistent attendance and number of submissions / presentations year after year has made it clear that we have a fairly large community that otherwise has no home under MICCAI.
So in short, showing relevance, building and growing a community, and serving as a home for that community are critical factors - and add to that a bit of flexibility and creativity and you could be in the race. But once in the race, you ought to deliver: be organized, communicate consistently and timely, make the authors feel appreciated and respected and be grateful to your reviewers.
Q. In one sentence, what do you hope people take away from AE-CAI this year?
This year is a bit special, as the timing is much tighter than usual, so we had to be even more creative when building the program to ensure that each author has some time to "shine” at the podium, while also providing sufficient time for in-depth discussion during the poster sessions, so despite the 50% of the usual allotted time, we succeeded to have a diverse and well-balanced program where all authors feel empowered and have the opportunity to showcase their work and engage in interactive discussions. So we look forward to welcoming our usual authors and attendees, as well as new contributors and community members and we hope they will enjoy this year's edition and look forward to receiving their contributions for AE-CAI 2025.
Q. Any final thoughts or comments?
It's hard to believe it's been 18 years of AE-CAI (and name variations), but then some of us on the team, although we have been attending it since 2006 or 2007, only go back as far as 2011 in terms or organization. Nevertheless, that's almost a decade and a half and we're still going strong. So we would like to thank those who started this way back in 2006 who planted the AE-CAI seed and all the organizers who have been watering it year after year for 18 years. We would also like to thank all our authors and contributors going back nearly two decades, our many and dedicated reviewers for their timely effort year after year, our generous sponsors, and the MICCAI secretariat for their help and support! Maybe we should plan a big AE-CAI party for its 20th edition - stay tuned!