Our Impact
A total of 304 trainees from 25 African nations and 3 Southeast Asian countries have been trained through SPARK Academy. The 2023/2024 Academy focused on learning deep learning methods for image segmentation of brain glioma tumors, a crucial clinical step in the diagnosis, classification, and treatment management of such tumors.
SPARK Academy: Pioneering AI in Medical Imaging
At SPARK Academy, each team is dedicated to designing, adapting, implementing, and evaluating deep learning methods.
2023 Achievements
In 2023, our teams developed 10 AI models, with 8 participating in the prestigious MICCAI Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) Challenge. One of our methods achieved a top 2 ranking. Additionally, our researchers presented 12 conference papers at various esteemed annual meetings, including MICCAI, where three participants represented Africa, and at regional African AI meetings such as IndabaX and ISMRM.
2024 Achievements
Building on our previous success, in 2024, SPARK teams focused on developing AI models for brain tumor segmentation, resulting in the publication of two papers.
Repository
All training materials and methods developed during 2023 and 2024 are accessible in our repository.
SPARK Academy provided me with AI knowledge, which couldn't be possible to understand it by myself. Through tutorial, hackathon, weekend seminars, my knowledge regarding AI escalated. SPARK connected me with people all over Africa and opened many doors for collaborations, to take Africa Diagnostic Imaging to the next level".... 2023 SPARK Academy Participant Testimonial.
