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Paper Submission

Background

Participants will be required to submit a short paper of length 6-12 pages in order to be eligible for the final ranking and prizes. Participants who participate in both tasks (pre-RT segmentation and mid-RT segmentation) are welcome to submit a single paper describing both methods or two separate papers. These papers will be published in our post-challenge proceedings. 

Chronologically, participants will first submit an abstract (as an intent to publish) followed by the full paper which will undergo peer-review by conference organizers. 

Lecture Notes in Computer Science Proceedings

HNTS-MRG 2024 has been accepted for publication as a Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) post-proceedings volume in the Challenges subline. The entire proceedings will be open-access (we have paid for open-access fees to Springer) so will be freely publicly available once published. Individual papers will be indexed in scientific literature databases (e.g., PubMed, Google Scholar). Here is an example of what the LNCS proceedings will look like (previous proceedings from HECKTOR). 

Paper Preparation Instructions

Participants should follow the Instructions for Authors of Papers to be Published in Springer Computer Science Proceedings, which contains detailed information on manuscript preparation. 

Authors are free to structure their papers as they wish, but manuscripts should generally focus on methods and technical developments rather than general background or data descriptions (which will be described in detail in the overview papers by the organizers). In order to link your paper with your grand challenge team, please add your team name at the end of the abstract. There is no limit to the number of authors. We encourage the participants to release their code and add GitHub links to their papers. 

As previously mentioned, teams submitting algorithms for both tasks may opt to submit either two separate papers, each describing the methods individually, or a single combined paper covering both. If the methods for both tasks are mostly similar (e.g., the same exact deep learning architecture but with different training data), we recommend submitting a single combined paper.

License-to-Publish-Agreement

Authors will be required to sign a license-to-publish-agreement. The license-to-publish-agreement (Word document) for our proceedings can be downloaded here. Please download the Word file, fill in the required sections (Proposed Title of the Contribution, Author(s) Full Name(s), Corresponding Author Name) and sign/date the final page. Springer does not currently accept digital signatures, so please use a physical signature. Please upload the signed document to EasyChair.

Submission Platform - EasyChair

We will be utilizing EasyChair as a submission platform: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hntsmrg2024. You will be asked to upload a PDF version of your manuscript along with the source file (Word or Latex). The HNTS-MRG organizers will coordinate the review of submitted papers (3 independent reviewers minimum for each paper).

Abstract Submission (Sept. 18)

We will request that participants submit a draft version of their abstract first (deadline September 18th). You do not have to upload any files at this time; you can just fill in the abstract text box in EasyChair. The abstract text can be modified later in EasyChair. 

Full Paper Submission (Sept. 25)

The full paper and the license-to-publish-agreement should be uploaded to EasyChair (deadline September 25th). Extensions may be granted on a case-by-case basis. The manuscript will be peer-reviewed by experts selected by the HNTS-MRG organizing committee. Following the review process, authors will have the opportunity to upload the revised final version.

Specific additional notes from Springer:

  • The license-to-publish-agreement is to be completed and signed by the corresponding author of each paper, on behalf of all of the authors of that paper. The corresponding author, who must match the corresponding author marked on the paper, must have the full right, power, and authority to sign the agreement on behalf of all of the authors of a particular paper, and accepts responsibility for releasing this material on their behalf.
  • Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.
  • Please review and take into account the Springer Code of Conduct (https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/book-authors-code-of-conduct). 

After the completion of the challenge, participants are free to submit data from their papers to preprint servers or journals as desired.

Paper Revisions (Nov. 21)

In response to reviewer comments, authors are required to submit their revised final papers to EasyChair by November 21.

Best Paper Award

One best paper award will be selected by the organizers. Initial score based ranking from EasyChair reviews will be used to screen initial candidate papers, followed by a consensus voting process by the program committee. There is no financial award associated with this prize, but authors will be provided a commemorative certificate.

Congratulations to Jintao Ren et al. for their paper titled Gradient Map-Assisted Head and Neck Tumor Segmentation: A Pre-RT to Mid-RT Approach in MRI-Guided Radiotherapy, which the organizers awarded the Best Paper Award.