Symposium on Statistical Shape Models & Applications June 11-13 2014 Delémont, Switzerland General information Preface In his seminal work nearly hundred years ago D’Arcy Thompson was the first drawing attention to the problems of mathematically characterizing biological shapes. While Harry Blum significantly contributed to the development of formal tools to address the related questions, it was not before the early nineties of the last century when this issue has become a major research focus within the emerging new field of medical image computing. A broad spectrum of methods has been developed since, allowing to use shape information as a priors for solving different problems in patient care, ranging from improved automatic segmentation to predicting individual organ shape from sparse information. These approaches did not only sustainably change radiological diagnosis by providing efficient support for the interpretation of the vast amount of images acquired today routinely, but also contributed to greatly improve therapeutic procedures by enabling more efficient surgical planning and improved outcome prediction. The Swiss National Competence Center of Competence in Research on Computer Aided and Image Guided Medical Intervention (NCCR Co-Me) has greatly contributed to this vigorous progress during the past 12 years. Shape modeling was one of the major scientific foci of the work of this Swiss-wide collaborative research and clinical network, resulting in major contributions to the international state-of-the-art. After these years of highly successful work, the recently founded Swiss Institute of Computer Assisted Surgery (SICAS) has taken over the coordination and support of the related continuing efforts of numerous Swiss research groups, in order to finally establish a Swiss network center for statistical shape modeling in the Canton Jura. As part of this, computing infrastructure has been installed and related personnel has been hired to run a medical image repository (Virtual Skeleton Database) which was used in the SHAPE 2014 challenge and will serve as an open lab for the scientific community The current Symposium is a first major initiative of SICAS, and is intended to become an annual pillar of the center, to further promote the exchange on the field of shape modeling and characterization, not only within the Swiss research community but in an international context. It has been a great pleasure to welcome leading scientists from all around the world, presenting their most recent results and shaping the future of this exciting research area through intensive discussions within the numerous sessions and podium discussions, covering many important aspects of recent research. It is our hope that this meeting is just a first step in maintaining the great traditions of the NCCR Co-Me and will serve as a basis and foundation for a series of similar events in the future. Gabor Székely, President of the SICAS Foundation Council Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 2 General information Travel to Delémont The congress venue is located 40 km from Basel in Delémont/Switzerland, the capital of the canton of Jura which is part of the French speaking region of Switzerland.  BY PLANE: Flights arrive at Basel (BSL) or Zurich (ZRH).  BY TRAIN: Delémont can be reached easily by train. Please check with the SBB website for more information.  BY CAR: The conference venue is located right at the highway exit Delémont East. Transportation from Delémont to the Symposium Venue Shuttle Bus A shuttle bus will take the participants from the train station in Delémont to the conference venue. June 11: 11:50 AM from the train station in Delémont to the Symposium 07:45 PM from the Symposium to the Hotel IBIS June 12: 08:45 AM from the Hotel IBIS to the Symposium Please use the CarPostal to go back to the station if you do not attend the social event. June 13: 08:45 AM from the Hotel IBIS to the Symposium 03:00 PM from the Symposium to the train station in Delémont Public transport – CarPostal The public transportation service in Delémont is called CarPostal. Bus #11 and #18 are leaving from the Station “Delémont, gare” and stop at “Delémont Zard” in front of the Symposium’s venue. Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 3 Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 4 Taxi services in Delémont All official taxis use a taximeter to calculate the price. A taxi form the center of Delémont (Station) to the Medtechlab is about 10 CHF and should take no longer than 5 minutes.  A& P Taxi Delémont: +41 32 422 00 88  EDI Taxi, Courroux: +41 79 520 09 90 Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 5 Map Accommodation Our recommended hotels are:  Hotel IBIS Delémont Delsberg  Hotel Le National, Delémont Both hotels are within a walkable distance from the train station. Links for both hotels can be found under the Travel/Accommodation section on shapesymposium.org Connectivity during the event Wifi access will be available during the symposium Social Event Dinner on Thursday 12th The dinner will take place at Hotel du Soleil, Le Noirmont. http://www.lesoleilaunoirmont.ch/soleil/index.php Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 6 A shuttle bus will take participants directly from the symposium venue to the event. A return shuttle to the Hotel IBIS is planned to arrive at 23:30 in Delémont. Registration The registration will open on Wednesday 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Please bring your ticket with the QRcode to the registration desk. Contact Venue MedTech Lab Place des Sciences 1 2822 Courroux Switzerland Organizers phone: +41 32 422 58 20 [email protected] si-cas.com Please do not hesitate to contact any of the following organizers if you have any questions or require assistance: Ruth Steinmann : [email protected], Phone +41 32 422 58 20 Michael Kistler : [email protected], Phone +41 78 764 22 40 Ghazi Bouabene: [email protected], Phone +41 78 799 86 22 Resources Proceeding and other resources will be available at http://shapesymposium.org Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 7 Shape 2014 Delémont, June 11-13 2014 8