By Adam Shephard (with the help of Chat-GPT)

I recently travelled to Athens for the ISBI 2024 conference. This was also a great opportunity to travel to Greece, and so my wife and I headed out a few days earlier and stayed on a nearby island called Aegina, just a 30 minute ferry from Athens port.

Famed for the Temple of Aphaia, pistachios, and hiking trails, we enjoyed what the island had to offer in a relaxing few days before the conference started. This included plenty of Souvlaki, Mythos and even hiking up Mount Ellanio, the highest mountain in the Saronic Gulf. The combination of spectacular views and the sheer volume of grilled meat made us question if we should stay on the island indefinitely.

Upon returning to Athens, the ISBI conference kicked off, lasting for four action-packed days. Several other TIA members also flew out to attend, including Shan, Abdullah, and Arwa, along with Edward also from DCS. Unfortunately, Shan’s start to the conference was less relaxing than my few days on the beaches of Aegina, having lost his checked luggage on the flight to Athens. Over the course of this conference, we saw many interesting talks and poster sessions. The plenary talk on the first day was by Prof Anant Madabhushi, who gave a fascinating talk on “Getting serious about AI in healthcare: retrospective and prospective validation”. We also attended some great tutorials on “Diffusion Models in Medical Imaging”, which we are hoping to disseminate further at an upcoming centre meeting.

The second evening of the conference featured a “treasure hunt” organized by the conference team, taking us to some of the highlights of Athens, including the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, the Roman Agora, the Ancient Agora of Athens, and Hadrian’s Library, all with the majestic Acropolis looming in the background. It was a great way to blend some sightseeing with networking.

On the third day, I gave an oral presentation on tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) scoring. I focused on the TIAger team’s submission to the TiGER Challenge for TIL scoring, where I showcased our algorithm’s performance. It was a great opportunity to present our work on a global stage and received a positive response. Our group’s contributions continued with poster presentations by Arwa, Abdullah and Edward on the penultimate day. Their work seemed to be a success, and saw continued interest and discussion throughout the session. We also had the chance to meet people from different research groups we’ve collaborated with before, which was a real pleasure.

Between conference sessions, we took some time to explore Athen’s historic wonders, with visits to the Acropolis and the Parthenon, leaving us both culturally enriched and sunburned. One particularly memorable event was the "symbolic marathon" that Abdullah and I attended, organized by the conference. Hundreds of ISBI attendees gathered at the Panathenaic Stadium, the birthplace of the modern Olympics and the starting point of all Olympic torch relays. Representing the TIA Centre, and Great Britain, we ran ten laps of the stadium. Although it wasn’t meant to be a race, we managed to finish in the top ten, proudly showcasing the TIA Centre. This was certainly one of the highlights of the ISBI conference, and it’s not every day you get to run in the footsteps of Olympians!

The trip home presented its own challenges. A delayed first flight out of Athens, running nearly two hours behind schedule, left us sprinting through Amsterdam airport in a desperate bid to catch our connecting flight to Birmingham. Despite our efforts, our checked luggage opted for an extended stay in Amsterdam. Luckily, we only had to wait a few days for it to be returned!

In summary, the ISBI 2024 conference was not just an academic success but also an adventure. For those considering attending next year, I highly recommend it—but maybe only take hand luggage!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank CRUK for funding the ANTICIPATE Project and Adam’s role in this project.

Contributions from Our Lab

Adam Shephard [Oral Presentation]: An Automated Pipeline for Tumour-Infiltrating Lymphocyte Scoring in Breast Cancer

Abdullah Alsalemi [Poster Presentation]: An Attention Based Pipeline for Identifying Pre-Cancer Lesions in Head and Neck Clinical Images

Arwa AlRubaiaa [Poster Presentation]: Cell Maps Representation for Lung Growth Patterns Classification in Whole Slide Images