BrainWorks 2026 The Brain Abnormality Workshop

BrainWorks 2026

The Brain Abnormality Workshop

Advancing computational neuroimaging and computational neuropathology methods that remain reliable in the presence of tumors, traumatic brain injury, infection, diffuse pathology, and imaging artifacts.

View call for papers See preliminary program

Why BrainWorks?

Robust methods for real-world data

BrainWorks aims to advance computational neuroimaging and computational neuropathology methods that operate effectively in the presence of brain abnormalities. Many machine learning methods in neuroimaging were developed and validated using neurologically healthy cohorts, which can lead to reduced performance when anatomy, tissue integrity, or signal characteristics depart from normative assumptions.

BrainWorks creates a forum for pathology-aware, generalisable image computing methods that explicitly address tumors, acquired brain injuries, enlarged perivascular spaces, infection, diffuse pathology, and imaging artifacts. The workshop emphasizes both methodological innovation and careful analysis of failure modes in clinically realistic data.

Primary aims

  1. Promote the development of robust and generalisable methods that explicitly account for abnormal anatomy, pathology-induced signal changes, and imaging artefacts.
  2. Encourage cross-pathology methodological exchange, bridging traditionally siloed domains.
  3. Foster integration between computational innovation and clinical interpretation, supporting downstream tasks such as diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment planning.
  4. Support reproducibility and benchmarking through shared datasets, evaluation protocols, and challenge-based comparisons.

Call for papers

We invite submissions on all aspects of medical image computation and computer assisted interventions involving brains with abnormalities, from focal lesions to diffuse pathology and artifacts.

  • Methodological innovations and rigorous quantitative evaluations.
  • Publicly available datasets, benchmarks, and robustness studies.
  • Foundational, explainable, or uncertainty-aware approaches.
  • Work that supports diagnosis, prognosis, decision-making, and treatment planning.
  • Studies highlighting bias, limitations, failure cases, and negative results.

Submission instructions to be posted beginning of April 2026.

Program coming soon

Whole day thematic event encompassing BraTS and AIMS-TBI 2026.

Automated identification of Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury lesions (AIMS-TBI) 2026

The AIMS-TBI 2026 challenge aims to develop a lesion segmentation tool capable of handling immense heterogeneity among lesion types. This year AIMS-TBI includes multi-modal data for training, with segmentation performance being assessed on T1w images only.

Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) 2026 Cluster of Challenges

The BraTS 2026 Cluster of challenges includes three segmentation challenges (Metastasis, Pediatrics and Generalizability), the BraTS Pathology and BraTS Inpainting challenges.

Organizing team

The BrainWorks Team

BrainWorks is organized by a cross-institutional team spanning early-, mid-, and senior-career researchers with expertise in neuroimaging, computer vision, machine learning, and clinical applications.

Organizing committee

  • Evelyn Deutscher, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
  • Ujjwal Baid, Emory University

evelyn.deutscher@mcri.edu.au (Primary contact)

Advisory board

  • Spyridon Bakas, Indiana University School of Medicine
  • Emily Dennis, University of Utah
  • Matthew Pease, Indiana University School of Medicine

Program committee

  • Elisabeth Wilde, University of Utah
  • Nicola De Souza, University of Utah
  • Neda Jahanshad, University of Southern California
  • Carla Pitarch-Abaigar, Indiana University School of Medicine
  • Sook-Lei Liew, University of Southern California
  • Phoebe Imms, Queensland Institute for Medical Research
  • Alexandra Paxinou, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas
  • Adrian Onicas, University of Utah
  • Andrei Irimia, University of Southern California
  • Frank Hillary, Pennsylvania State University
  • Eamonn Kennedy, University of Utah
  • Sanket Kachole, Indiana University School of Medicine
  • Jayden You, Indiana University School of Medicine

FAQ

Who should submit?

Researchers and clinicians working on computational neuroimaging, neuropathology, biomarkers, segmentation, registration, classification, harmonization, multimodal fusion, robustness, and related topics in abnormal brain data.

Are negative results welcome?

Yes. BrainWorks explicitly welcomes studies that analyze limitations, failure cases, and gaps between benchmarks and real-world deployment.

Will proceedings be published?

Yes. The workshop plans proceedings in the MICCAI Satellite Events Joint Springer LNCS proceedings.

How is BrainWorks different from BraTS or AIMS-TBI?

BrainWorks is the broader scientific forum spanning multiple brain abnormalities and methodological questions, complementing task-specific challenge benchmarking efforts.