Heidelberg – The award for the DKFZ researcher, which is endowed with 10,000 euros, is given for a quality study on annotation instructions for biomedical AI imaging. The project was funded by Helmholtz Imaging, the platform for the advancement of scientific imaging.
In 2022, the Deggendorf University of Applied Sciences (THD) announced the “Anton Fink Science Prize for Artificial Intelligence (AI)” for the second time. The winner has now been announced. Tim Rädsch from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) convinced the jury the most. He is now receiving prize money of 10,000 euros for his research.
18 AI research teams from Germany and Austria applied for the Fink AI Prize. In the end, doctoral student Tim Rädsch won the race. The thesis for his master’s degree at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was created in the DKFZ department for intelligent medical systems. Rädsch presented the first systematic study on annotation instructions in biomedical imaging.
AI algorithms learn from images in which relevant structures (e.g. tumors) are marked – experts speak of annotations here. An annotation guide is a document that specifies the correct marking of relevant structures in biomedical images. First, Rädsch’s work revealed a major discrepancy between professional annotators’ desire for detailed guidance and the common practice of annotating without guidance in the majority of biomedical studies. In addition, Rädsch was able to show that the type of instruction is crucial for the quality of data sets that form the foundation for AI algorithms. A resulting scientific publication of his results has just been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence and underlines the high quality of the work.
Tim Rädsch studied industrial engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). His work was supervised by Lena Maier-Hein and Annette Kopp-Schneider from the DKFZ and by Ali Sunyaev from the KIT. Rädsch has been researching as a doctoral student in the Intelligent Medical Systems department at the DKFZ since 2021. His project was funded by Helmholtz Imaging, the platform for the promotion of scientific imaging.
The founder of the prize, the Deggendorf pharmacist Anton Fink, would like to use the KI Prize to make a contribution to strengthening teaching, research and development. The award ceremony will take place on May 11, 2023 together with several AI lectures at DIT.
More information on the THD AI Prize can be found at www.th-deg.de/ki-preis.
With more than 3,000 employees, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) is the largest biomedical research facility in Germany. More than 1,300 scientists at the DKFZ research how cancer develops, record cancer risk factors and search for new strategies to prevent people from developing cancer. They are developing new methods with which tumors can be diagnosed more precisely and cancer patients can be treated more successfully. At the Cancer Information Service (KID) of the DKFZ, those affected, interested citizens and specialist groups receive individual answers to all questions on the subject of cancer. Together with partners from the university clinics, the DKFZ operates the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) at the Heidelberg and Dresden sites, and the Hopp Children’s Cancer Center KiTZ in Heidelberg. In the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK), one of the six German Centers for Health Research, the DKFZ maintains translation centers at seven university partner locations. The combination of excellent university medicine with the top-class research of a Helmholtz center at the NCT and DKTK locations is an important contribution to transferring promising approaches from cancer research to the clinic and thus improving the chances of cancer patients. The DKFZ is funded 90 percent by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and 10 percent by the state of Baden-Württemberg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers.