Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research Podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they’re teaming up with.

In this episode, Dr. Gretchen Huizinga talks with Microsoft Health Futures Senior Director Javier Alvarez and Dr. Raj Jena, a radiation oncologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals in the United Kingdom, about Project InnerEye, a Microsoft Research effort that applies machine learning to medical image analysis. The pair shares how a 10-plus-year collaborative journey—and a combination of research and good software engineering—has resulted in the hospital’s creation of an AI system that is helping to decrease the time cancer patients have to wait to begin treatment. Alvarez and Jena chart the path of their collaboration in AI-assisted medical imaging, from Microsoft Research’s initiation of Project InnerEye and its decision to make the resulting research tools available in open source to Addenbrooke’s subsequent testing and validation of these tools to meet the regulatory requirements for use in a clinical setting. They also discuss supporting clinician productivity—and ultimately patient outcomes—and the important role patients play in incorporating AI into healthcare.

Learn more:

• Project InnerEye | Project page
• How AI is helping to shrink waiting times for NHS cancer patients | Microsoft News Centre UK blog post, June 2023
• Accounting for past imaging studies: Enhancing radiology AI and reporting | Microsoft Research blog, June 2023
• Microsoft Health Futures | Lab page
• Biomedical Imaging | Research group page
• Evaluation of Deep Learning to Augment Image Guided Radiotherapy for Head and Neck and Prostate Cancers | JAMA publication, November 2020