Introduction

The hippocampus is a structure of intense interest in biomedical imaging and image analysis research. This interest is driven by the unanswered questions about the role that the hippocampus plays in the memory system, its unique vulnerability and involvement in neurodegenerative disorders, its utility as an early biomarker in Alzheimer's disease, and many other factors. The complex folding anatomy of the hippocampus presents challenges for general whole-brain analysis frameworks and calls for dedicated, hippocampus-specific methods.

CAPH'08 is the first workshop in the image analysis community that specifically targets the hippocampus. The organizers felt that such a venue is long overdue, since many specialized techniques for segmenting, measuring and mapping the hippocampus are presented each year at major image analysis conferences. By bringing the community of hippocampus image analysis researchers together for a day of in-depth discussion of leading edge work, we were able to share and stimulate new research, form new collaborations, and begin to collectively address the many challenges still faced by the field.

CAPH'08 was held as a satellite workshop at the 11th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2008). It took place on September 6, 2008 at the Kimmel Center at New York University. Papers were solicited in all areas of hippocampus imaging analysis research, and 16 high-quality papers were submitted to the workshop. Of these, 9 papers were accepted for oral presentation, and 4 were selected as poster presentations. Hippocampal segmentation and morphometry were by far the most prominent topics, but other research areas included subfield segmentation, functional imaging analysis and machine learning. Approximately 25 researchers attended the workshop.

Workshop Topics

Papers were invited in all areas of research involving hippocampus-focused imaging analysis, including

• automatic and semi-automatic segmentation of the hippocampus
• mapping and segmentation of hippocampal subfields
• geometric modeling and shape analysis
• hippocampus-centric normalization and atlas generation
• validation approaches for manual and automatic techniques
• histology and postmortem imaging analysis
• fusion of information from postmortem, in vivo and animal imaging
• longitudinal and cross-sectional morphometry studies of disease, healthy aging/development
• fMRI and DTI analysis techniques focusing on the hippocampus

Workshop Dates

Program