The Competition on Cells Classification by Fluorescent Image Analysis is hosted by the 20th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), which is the premier forum for the presentation of technological advances and research results in the fields of theoretical, experimental, and applied image and video processing. ICIP will be held during September 15-18, 2013 in Melbourne, Australia.
The competition focuses on cells classification of cells images extracted from Indirect Immunofluorescence (IIF) applied on Human Epithelial Cells type 2 (HEp-2 cells). The IIF on HEp-2 has been the golden standard as a diagnostic methodology to reveal the presence of autoimmune diseases (e.g. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), Rheumatoid Arthritis, etc). Nevertheless, it is labor extensive and time consuming. As such, Computer Aided Diagnosis systems play an important part to address these issues. The interest toward the realization of Computer Aided Diagnosis is witnessed by the growing number of publications proposing algorithms for the analysis of IIF images. Therefore, this competition provides an excellent venue for researchers and practitioners in this area to meet and compare their systems performance on common datasets. The competition is the results of an international collaboration effort between the University of Salerno (Italy), the University of Queensland (Australia) and Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology (one of the largest pathology testing laboratories in Australia).