TC11 - Measurement in Testing, Inspection and Certification
What: 45-minute Discussion Club “TIC talks”
Who: IMEKO TC-11 “Measurement in Testing, Inspection and Certification”
Name of the discussion room: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Metrology needs
Date and time: 20 Jun 2023 13:00 CET
Link: https://meet.google.com/quy-ciim-yyr (the link is active only during the meeting)
Fee: free of charge for participants
Name and surname of the moderator: Annette Roettger
Short description of the discussion topic:
Artificial intelligence (AI) methods are enjoying much success especially in the medical sector as they promise to be of great benefit for patients and offer an enormous potential for the economy. However, AI is also creating new challenges. As a National Metrology Institute, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is Germany's highest authority with a legal mandate when it comes to evaluating measurement procedures. PTB is rising to these new challenges, because there is to date no generally recognized anchor of trust in quality infrastructure.
PTB has formed the Innovation Cluster “Health” which is led by Annette Röttger, member of the presidential board of PTB, to address challenges going along with the quick transformation of the heath sector. Some examples are:
- To intensively deal with the subject of AI within the scope of its legal mandate, given, for example, by the German Medical Devices Act.
- To develop modern methods for determining the image quality of X-ray images, e.g. in mammography. The aim is to use objective parameters for the image quality and dose to be able to develop an objective target value and optimize these radiological diagnoses – with a view to achieving the best possible image quality at low doses.
- To develop robust methods for image reconstruction in magnetic resonance tomography. Here, machine learning allows, for instance, the image reconstruction of functional MR images to be accelerated in such a way that examinations of moving tumors are also possible.
Meanwhile, PTB has expanded its interdisciplinary team in the scope of the research program "Metrology for AI in Medicine" (M4AIM) which is developing new procedures for the standardized evaluation of AI methods in various fields by 11 early stage researchers. The thematic focus is on explainability, robustness and uncertainty of AI systems in the fields of imaging procedures as well as on radiation and laboratory medicine. The focus is on the team character as well as on the three major pillars of metrology for AI applications. The first pillar is comprehending the reasons for an AI result. The second pillar is about determining the uncertainty of AI methods, which is the metrological approach to the accuracy of the corresponding measurement methods. The third pillar stands for the generalization and robustness of AI methods. Here, the aim is to develop parameters which can be standardized to evaluate robustness against noisy, unknown or harmful input data.
The recent developments at the Innovation Cluster “Health” focussing on AI are presented and discussed.
Briefly about the moderator:
Dr. Annette Röttger, Member of the Presidential Board of PTB:
- Head of the PTB Innovation Clusters “Energy”, “Health” and “Environment and Climate” of PTB
- Chair of PTB Committee “Research Programmes”
- Alternate of EURAMET e.V.
- Chair of the European Metrology Network for Radiation Protection
- Coordinator of EMPIR 19ENV19 traceRadon
- Member of several national and international advisory boards and committees