[Computing in Cardiology / 7-10 September 2014 / Cambridge, Massachusetts / http://cinc.org/2014/]

Second Announcement

[Aerial view of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's main campus]

We cordially invite you to participate in the 41st annual international conference of Computing in Cardiology, which returns to Cambridge, Massachusetts from Sunday, 7 September through Wednesday, 10 September 2014. Cambridge is the home of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and of Harvard University. The conference will be hosted by MIT's Laboratory for Computational Physiology.

Abstract and early full paper submission is now closed, and no further submissions can be made for CinC 2014. If you submitted an abstract, thank you; you will receive a decision shortly after the meeting of the abstract review committee at the end of May. Authors of accepted abstracts will be able to submit their full papers via the abstract and paper submission site between 1 June and 12 September. If you submitted a YIA or other early full paper, you will be able to revise it if you wish between 1 June and 12 September.

Nearly 400 abstracts and over 60 early full papers were submitted by authors from 40 nations on six continents. Based on these submissions, we expect to have an outstanding scientific program at CinC 2014. The program, including accepted abstracts, will be posted on the CinC web site in June.

If you missed the deadline, we invite you to attend CinC 2014, and we encourage you to submit your abstract to CinC 2015. Instructions for doing so will be posted on the CinC web site following this year's meeting.

About CinC

Computing in Cardiology (formerly Computers in Cardiology) is an international scientific conference that has been held annually since 1974. CinC provides a forum for scientists and professionals from the fields of medicine, physics, engineering and computer science to discuss their current research in topics pertaining to computing in clinical cardiology and cardiovascular physiology.

The scientific sessions of the conference include oral and poster presentations, the 22nd annual Rosanna Degani Young Investigators Award competition, and the 15th annual PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge. In recent CinC meetings, the topics have included:

Cardiovascular Imaging
Echocardiography, angiography, SPECT & PET, MRI, CT, 3D imaging, multimodality imaging, knowledge-based image processing, new imaging modalities
Cardiovascular Mechanics
Contractile and valvular function, arterial biomechanics, coronary artery measurements, instrumentation, blood pressure, cardiac surgery applications
ECG
Repolarization, ischemia, high-resolution ECG, arrhythmia, diagnostic ECG, serial comparison, apnea detection from the ECG, exercise ECG
Electrophysiology
Mapping, ablation, fibrillation/defibrillation, implantable devices
Medical Informatics
Telemedicine, teleassistance, wearable applications, pervasive computing & ambient intelligence, Internet/intranet, electronic health records, interfaces, DICOM & communication standards, automated decision support, PACS, databases, systems & instrumentation, patient monitoring
Modelling & Simulation
Cellular models, forward and inverse solutions
Molecular Techniques in Cardiology
Bioinformatics, enetic causes of cardiac diseases, ommunication between cells, angiogenesis, tissue engineering, cellular theraphy
System Study
Heart rate variability, baroreflex control of circulation, methods and applications, nonstationarity and nonlinearity, cardionephrology, sport and cardiac rehabilitation
PhysioNet/CinC Challenge
Current challenge (robust detection of heart beats in multimodal data), followup studies on previous challenge topics (including noninvasive fetal ECG, predicting mortality of ICU patients, and predicting acute hypotensive episodes)

Important Dates

15 June 2014 Abstract decision notification
15 July 2014 Author confirmations due
Last day for early registration
Last day for early hotel reservation
1 September 2014 Full manuscripts due
7-10 September 2014 41st annual CinC conference

In order to reserve their places in the scientific program, all authors must confirm by 15 July that they will present their accepted submissions at CinC 2014. The registration fee increases after 15 July, and rooms reserved in the conference hotel at a discounted rate for CinC attendees may not be available after that date.

Venue

Situated on opposite banks of the scenic Charles River, Boston and Cambridge are lively, surprising, multicultural, emininently walkable cities with excellent modern public transportation, and nearly four centuries of history. Over 100 colleges and universities, with over 250,000 students, contribute to the cities' cultural life and diversity. Among the area's major attractions are the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the USS Constitution, and (for baseball fans) Fenway Park, as well as dozens of smaller but noteworthy landmarks, musical and theatrical performing groups, parks, museums, and the waterfront, harbor, and its islands. During the social program, attendees will sample some of these hidden gems.

Boston is easily reached by non-stop flights from Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Zurich, and many major cities in North America. The conference venue, the Royal Sonesta Hotel, is on the Cambridge bank of the Charles, three miles (five km) from Logan International Airport and adjacent to Boston's Museum of Science and a variety of restaurants and shops. The hotel provides free shuttle service to MIT and to other nearby attractions.

Preliminary Conference Schedule

The conference will begin on Sunday, 7 September, with an afternoon symposium on the MIT campus in the Media Lab, about a ten-minute walk from the main conference venue. The scientific sessions will begin on Monday morning with the opening plenary session of presentations by the four finalists in the Rosanna Degani Young Investigator Award (YIA) competition, followed by parallel sessions. Monday afternoon and evening will be devoted to the traditional social program with opportunities for activists and passivists to explore the Boston and Cambridge area, followed by a gala dinner cruise exploring Boston harbor. Parallel and poster sessions will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday, ending on Wednesday afternoon with a closing plenary session, including selected talks and presentations of the YIA, Challenge, and poster awards. Optional post-conference tour programs and workshops will be announced later this spring.

Sunday Symposium: Data-driven Learning, Discovery, and Innovation

The focus of this year's symposium is data — big data, shared data, metadata; well-characterized, multidimensional, complex, physiologic and clinical data — and how data resources function as catalysts and accelerators of progress in understanding, predicting, and treating chronic and critical disorders. The program will include presentations by five outstanding researchers:

Part I: Resources for Data-driven Research

The Framingham Heart Study
Daniel Levy, MD
Director of the Framingham Heart Study
Director of the Center for Population Studies
NIH/NHLBI
http://www.framinghamheartstudy.org/
PhysioNet: the Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals
Ary L. Goldberger, MD
PhysioNet Program Director
Director of the Margret & H. A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
http://physionet.org
The MIMIC Intensive Care Databases
Leo Anthony Celi, MD
Laboratory for Computational Physiology, MIT
Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Founder and Executive Director of Sana (sana.mit.edu)
http://mimic.physionet.org/

Part II: Closing the Loop

Early detection of subacute potentially catastrophic illnesses using readily available bedside monitoring data
J. Randall Moorman, MD
Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering and Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, University of Virginia
Editor-in-Chief, Physiological Measurement
http://bme.virginia.edu/people/moorman.html
Detection and treatment of apnea in preterm infants
David Paydarfar, MD
Professor of Neurology and Physiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/206

The PhysioNet/CinC Challenge 2014

This year's challenge is the 15th in the annual series which we established at CinC 2000. Its topic is Robust Detection of Heart Beats in Multimodal Data, and it aims to accelerate development of open-source research tools that can reliably, efficiently, and automatically analyze continuous long-term data from bedside monitors and similar devices that record not only ECG but usually other physiologic signals as well. The first phase of the challenge began on 7 January and ended on 7 April; the challenge resumed following the CinC abstract deadline on 16 April, and continues until 15 August. Participants wishing to be eligible for Challenge awards must have submitted an acceptable abstract describing their work on the Challenge by the abstract deadline (which has now passed), and must attend the conference to present their work. The most successful eligible participants in each of the three phases of the Challenge will receive awards during the closing plenary session at CinC on Wednesday afternoon, 10 September. If you missed the deadline, you are still welcome to participate unofficially (without eligibility for awards) and to join the discussion during scientific sessions dedicated to the challenge at CinC 2014. For further details, visit http://physionet.org/challenge/2014.

Bill and Gary Sanders Poster Awards

To recognize, celebrate, and promote excellence in poster presentations at CinC, former CinC president Bill Sanders and his wife, Gary, established the poster awards in 1997. In gratitude for their many contributions to CinC throughout its entire history, the CinC Board named the Poster Awards in honor of Gary and Bill Sanders. This year's awards will be presented during the closing plenary session on Wednesday, 10 September, to the authors of the three posters judged best in each poster session by a jury of Board members and selected attendees. All posters presented by their authors during the poster sessions are eligible to win an award. For details, see http://www.cinc.org/poster.shtml.

Visas

Don't wait to hear if your abstract has been accepted -- by then, it may be too late!

You will need a visa to attend CinC 2014 unless you live in or are a citizen of the USA, or you are a citizen or national of Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brunei, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, or the United Kingdom. Visit the web site of the US State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs at http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english.html for further information.

Conference Secretariat

Questions may be directed to cinc-2014@cinc.org.

[Laboratory for Computational Physiology]

Previous announcements:

Zeroth announcement (9/2013)
First announcement (1/2014)
Call for papers (3/2014)