MICCAI 2026 Workshop

Off-Grid: 1st Workshop on Continuous Representations and Grid-Free Methods in Medical Imaging

Date TBA, October 2026
Location Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Room TBA
Time TBA

Workshop Scope

Medical imaging has long relied on discrete, grid-based representations that impose artificial constraints on inherently continuous anatomical structures. This workshop aims to explore "off-grid" approaches, from Implicit Neural Representations to Gaussian Splats, ultimately advancing medical image computing and computer assisted intervention.

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions on a wide range of "off-grid" methods, including but not limited to:

Continuous Representations for Medical Modalities

Neural fields and implicit neural representations for encoding MRI, CT, X-ray, ultrasound, pathology images, endoscopy, and other medical signals

Grid-Free Reconstruction & Rendering

NeRFs, Gaussian Splatting, and related techniques for 2D/3D/4D visualization, novel view synthesis, and surface/volume reconstruction of anatomical structures

Generalization Beyond Single Subjects

Generalization approaches including autodecoders, hypernetworks, or meta-learning strategies

Neural Compression

Neural compression strategies using implicit representations for high-fidelity storage and transmission of large-scale medical imaging datasets

Resolution-Agnostic Analysis

Methods leveraging continuous representations for super-resolution, cross-resolution learning, and handling heterogeneous acquisition protocols

Registration & Spatial Alignment

Continuous deformation fields and grid-free approaches for image registration across modalities, time points, respiratory/cardiac phases, or subjects

Segmentation & Shape Modeling

Implicit surface representations and splat-based methods for anatomical structure segmentation and shape completion

Surgical & Interventional Applications

Real-time rendering, scene reconstruction, and visualization for surgical planning and navigation

Generative Modeling

Diffusion models, GANs, and other generative approaches combined with continuous representations for synthetic medical data generation

Uncertainty Quantification

Methods for estimating uncertainty in INRs, NeRFs, and Gaussian Splatting for safer deployment in clinical workflows

Neural Operators for Imaging Tasks

Fourier Neural Operators, DeepONets, and related architectures for learning resolution-independent mappings for reconstruction, super-resolution, and inverse problems

Physics-Informed Neural Networks

PINNs and their application to solving partial differential equations and parameter estimation in medical imaging

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline
TBA
Final Decisions
TBA
Camera Ready Deadline
TBA
Workshop Date
TBA, October 2026

All deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Submission Guidelines

Paper Format

  • Unless stated otherwise, all paper must follow the official MICCAI 2026 paper submission guidelines
  • Papers must be formatted using the official MICCAI 2026 LNCS template
  • All submitted material must be properly anonymized for the double-blind review process
  • We encourage authors to submit anonymized code alongside their paper (e.g. using AnonymousGitHub)

Originality

All submissions must be entirely original and should not overlap substantially with any work already published or under review. Likewise, no paper with overlapping content may be submitted to another conference, journal, or workshop during the review period (with the explicit exception of preprint servers like arXiv, bioRxiv, MedRxiv, or TechRxiv).

Review Process

Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. We will use OpenReview for the review process, and intend to publish anonymized reviews and meta-reviews. Reviews will evaluate technical quality, novelty, clinical relevance, clarity, and reproducibility. Papers that fail to stick to the formatting rules or are not properly anonymized will be desk rejected.

Participation

All accepted papers must be presented in person by an author registered for physical, on-site participation at the conference. We reserve the right to withdraw an accepted paper from the proceedings if the authors fail to present in person.

Proceedings

Accepted papers will be published in the MICCAI 2026 Workshop Proceedings - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) by Springer Nature. We will also provide open access through the MICCAI Society pages.

Submission System (OpenReview - not yet available)

Workshop Program

Keynote Speaker

Prof. Guha Balakrishnan

Prof. Guha Balakrishnan, PhD

Rice University

Guha Balakrishnan is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research focuses on scalable and reliable computer vision methods applied to medical and geospatial imaging. He is a co-author of several influential INR papers including "WIRE: Wavelet Implicit Neural Representations" and "MINER: Multiscale Implicit Neural Representations", as well as MICCAI 2025's best paper "Fit Pixels, Get Labels: Meta-Learned Implicit Networks for Image Segmentation".

Organizing Committee

Paul Friedrich
Paul Friedrich
University of Basel
Switzerland
Julian McGinnis
Julian McGinnis
Technical University of Munich
Germany
Vasiliki Sideri-Lampretsa
Vasiliki Sideri-Lampretsa
Technical University of Munich
Germany
Yunjie Chen
Yunjie Chen
University College London
United Kingdom
Florentin Bieder
Florentin Bieder
University of Basel
Switzerland
Suprosanna Shit
Suprosanna Shit
University of Zurich
Switzerland
Jelmer M. Wolterink
Jelmer M. Wolterink
University of Twente
Netherlands

Program Committee

The complete list of program committee members will be announced soon. We are assembling a distinguished panel of experts from academia and industry to ensure rigorous and fair evaluation of all submissions.

Contact Information

For questions regarding the workshop, please contact the organizing committee:

workshop.offgrid@gmail.com

Sponsors

Best Paper Award Sponsor: ImFusion (500€)