Visual AI in Healthcare

How do you train ML models on pathology slides that are thousands of times larger than standard images? Foundation models offer a breakthrough approach to these gigapixel-scale challenges. This talk explores how self-supervised foundation models trained on broad histopathology datasets are transforming computational pathology. We’ll examine their progress in handling weakly-supervised learning, managing tissue preparation variations, and enabling rapid prototyping with minimal labeled examples. However, significant challenges remain: increasing computational demands, the potential for bias, and questions about generalizability across diverse populations. This talk will offer a balanced perspective to help separate foundation model hype from genuine clinical value.

Recent advances in promptable segmentation have transformed medical imaging workflows, yet most existing models are constrained to static 2D or 3D applications. This talk presents LesionLocator, the first end-to-end framework for universal 4D lesion segmentation and tracking using dense spatial prompts. The system enables zero-shot tumor analysis across whole-body 3D scans and multiple timepoints, propagating a single user prompt through longitudinal follow-ups to segment and track lesion progression. Trained on over 23,000 annotated scans and supplemented with a synthetic time-series dataset, LesionLocator achieves human-level performance in segmentation and outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in longitudinal tracking tasks. The presentation also highlights advances in 3D interactive segmentation, including our open-set tool nnInteractive, showing how spatial prompting can scale from user-guided interaction to clinical-grade automation.