Michael Abramoff

Michael D. Abràmoff, MD PhD

Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa
Professor of Computer Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Iowa

"Autonomous AI and patients: Safety, Efficacy, Equity"

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Dr. Michael D. Abramoff, MD, PhD, is a fellowship-trained retina specialist, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is Founder and CEO of IDx, the first company ever to receive FDA clearance for an autonomous AI diagnostic system. In this capacity, as an expert on AI in healthcare, he has been invited to brief the US Congress, the White House and the Federal Trade Commission. He continues to treat patients with retinal disease and trains medical students, residents, and fellows, as well as engineering graduate students at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Abramoff has published over 260 peer reviewed journal papers (h-index 58) on AI, image analysis, and retinal diseases, and many book chapters, that have been cited over 27,000 times. He is the inventor on 17 patents and 5 patent applications on AI, medical imaging and image analysis. In 2010, Dr. Abramoff’s research findings led him to found IDx, to bring to patients more affordable, more accessible, and higher quality healthcare.

IDx is a leading AI diagnostics company on a mission to transform the quality, accessibility, and affordability of healthcare. The company is focused on developing clinically-aligned autonomous AI. By enabling diagnostic assessment in primary care settings, IDx aims to increase patient access to high-quality, affordable disease detection. In 2018, IDx became the first company ever to receive FDA clearance for an autonomous AI diagnostic system. The system, called IDx-DR, detects diabetic retinopathy without requiring a physician to interpret the results.

Kyle Myers

Kyle J. Myers, Ph.D.

Director, Division of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Software Reliability
Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, U.S. FDA

“AI-Enabled Systems in Medical Imaging: USFDA Research and Regulatory Pathways”

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Kyle J. Myers, Ph.D., received bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Occidental College in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona in 1985. Since 1987 she has worked for the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the FDA, where she is the Director of the Division of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Software Reliability in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health’s Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories.

In this role she leads research programs in medical imaging systems and software tools including 3D breast imaging systems and CT devices, digital pathology systems, medical display devices, computer-aided diagnostics, biomarkers (measures of disease state, risk, prognosis, etc. from images as well as other assays and array technologies), and assessment strategies for imaging and other high-dimensional data sets from medical devices.

She is the FDA Principal Investigator for the Computational Modeling and Simulation Project of the Medical Device Innovation Consortium. Along with Harrison H. Barrett, she is the coauthor of Foundations of Image Science, published by John Wiley and Sons in 2004 and winner of the First Biennial J.W. Goodman Book Writing Award from OSA and SPIE.  She is an associate editor for the Journal of Medical Imaging as well as Medical Physics. Dr. Myers is a Fellow of AIMBE, OSA, SPIE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She serves on SPIE’s Board of Directors (2018-2020).

John Condeelis

John Condeelis, Ph.D.

Judith & Burton P. Resnick Chair in Translational Research
Professor and Co-Chair,
Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology
Professor of Surgery,
Director, Basic and Translational Research,
Department of Surgery
Co-Director, Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center &
Integrated Imaging Program
Scientific Director, Analytical Imaging Facility
Director, Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program, Albert Einstein Cancer Center
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

"From Biophotonics to MRI: Imaging the mechanism of tumor cell dissemination during metastasis"

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John Condeelis' research interests are in optical physics, cell biology and biophysics, cancer biology and mouse models of cancer. He and his collaborators developed the multiphoton imaging technology and animal models used to identify invasion and intravasation micro-environments in mammary tumors. Integration of intravital multiphoton imaging with computational /systems analysis of living breast tumors identified the dominant tumor cell phenotypes contributing to invasion and dissemination during metastasis. This led to the discovery and verification of the paracrine interaction between tumor cells and macrophages in vivo, the role of macrophages in the migration of tumor cells during HGF-dependent tumor cell streaming to blood vessels and the mechanism of tumor cell dissemination from primary tumors via TMEM (Tumor MicroEnvironment of Metastasis) to distant metastatic sites. Based on these results, cell collection techniques, including the in vivo invasion assay were developed for the collection of migrating and disseminating macrophages and tumor cells. This led to the discovery of the mouse and human invasion signatures, and the TMEM, MenaCalc and MenaINV markers for assessing risk of metastasis and prediction of response in breast cancer patients to both chemotherapy, and receptor tyrosine kinase and tyrosine kinase inhibitors used to suppress metastasis.

John Condeelis has devised optical microscopes for uncaging, biosensor detection and multiphoton imaging for these studies and has used novel caged-enzymes and biosensors to test, in vivo, the predictions of the invasion signatures regarding the mechanisms of tumor cell dissemination and metastasis. He is one of the founding co-directors of the Integrated Imaging Program dedicated to the integration and validation of clinical imaging platforms, including digital pathology, with high resolution optical imaging in the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center. He has authored more than 300 scientific papers on various aspects of his research.