Author instructions

Since the program of this years MIDL might appear quite differently from what you expect, there is a video explaining how you will present your work and what you have to prepare for it!

Presentation guidelines

Full paper ("long oral")

  • 10-13 minute presentation video
  • and landscape PDF slide(s) that serve as virtual poster.
  • Prepare a brief (max 3 minutes) oral introduction of yourself and your work to give live before the panel discussion starts
  • By default your poster slides will be shown during your live introduction. If you prefer a different set of slides, please upload them to our cloud with file ending intro.pdf. There is also the option to share your screen.

Full or Short paper ("short oral")

  • 4-6 minute presentation video,
  • and 1-3 landscape PDF slide(s) that serve as virtual poster.
  • Prepare a brief (max 90 sec) oral introduction of yourself and your work to give live before the panel discussion starts
  • By default the first page of your poster slides will be shown during your live introduction. If you prefer a different slide, please upload them to our cloud with file ending intro.pdf

No teasers are required this year.

Try to keep it lively and avoid cramming in too many details, there will be time for discussion in the live sessions. Refer to the paper for numerical results and implementation detail and aim to convey the gist of the method you propose or application you want to solve.

While voice only over slides will be OK, it will be great to also have the presenter face embedded within the slides in the video. While we are unable to provide individualized technical support to help you create these videos, we will provide some examples/templates on how to record videos on this page. The recording has to meet the following requirements:

  • 16/9 aspect ratio, resolution at least 1440x720p
  • Saved in .mp4 format, Audio channel in mono or stereo (no 5.1 or any creative codec)
  • Less than 100 MByte (short oral) or 200 MByte (long oral)
  • Slides (1-3) of your poster should be in .pdf

Please adhere to the above duration and format requirements, otherwise the form of the presentation is up to you. However, please make sure the video includes the title of the paper, the authors’ names and affiliations, and a mention to MIDL 2021.

Virtual conference

We believe that one of the most important aspects of conferences and particularly of MIDL is to get in touch and discuss recent methods and results. Hence we want to put a focus on discussions and interaction between all participants and the authors of the 123 accepted papers.

Given that this is an international conference and that we will have participants from many different time zones, we will have a 'prime-time' stretching for six hours that should give almost everybody an opportunity to join us. To make the best use of this time slot, we will focus on keynotes and joint discussions. Each of the three MIDL conference days will have:

  • one keynote,
  • two long oral discussion sessions (18 selected full papers in total, single track),
  • two short oral discussion sessions (further 42 full papers and 63 short papers in total, in dual track), and
  • two poster sessions (one slot for each paper, full and short on the same days).

In addition, we ask all authors to prepare video presentations, which will be shown twice in two sessions before the 'prime time'. Participants are invited to attend either of these two separate videos viewing sessions in their respective time zones, or to view the videos individually. Your questions will be collected for the later discussions. During 'prime time', we will all meet live and discuss with the authors. Authors will briefly introduce their work and answer live questions (in panelist groups of three) as well as points brought up during the video viewing. To further foster interaction, there will be the possibility for individual personal interactions with other participants via GatherTown. All presenting authors are asked to be available in GatherTown with a few PDF slides at hand to discuss your work in more detail.

Video recording tips

To ensure everything looks nice, we would like you to use OBS Studio (see OBS Project) for preparing your video. We have prepared two template background images you can use for positioning your presentation and speaker view, for 4:3 and 16:9 presentations. You can download them here:

To facilitate using OBS, there is a short video tutorial available. Further, we'll hold two support sessions (please refer to the email you received - if you can't find it, email us!).

Group Discussion Sessions

Long and short oral discussions are in groups of 3 papers. Authors will give a brief introduction of themselves and their work. Subsequently, a moderated panel discussion will take live questions and also answer questions taken during the viewing sessions.

Poster Sessions (for Individual Discussion)

Twice during prime time you will be able to connect to authors via GatherTown to discuss all the questions still open after the group discussions. You can walk around with your avatar and do casual live video/audio chats with people at their virtual posters. A poster can be a single-page PDF or a few slides (1-3 slides landscape) and be visible to attendees throughout the conference. Please note that the first slide will serve as preview in Gather.Town. Discussions can be either individual (one-to-one) or with a group of people that dynamically gathers around the poster (just as in real live conferences).

Study group sessions

Study groups consisting of PhD students and a mentor meet before ‘prime time’ to warm-up for the discussions and to collect further questions. Sign up to participate at Google Form

Video Viewing Sessions

Grab a coffee/drink sit back in your armchair and watch a series of pre-recorded talks of long orals short orals in the viewing session that fits your time zone: the night before each day (for the Americas) and morning before prime-time on the day (for Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania). Authors do not have to be present, but we will take questions in the chat that can be answered in the live sessions later. All videos will also be available for registered attendees beforehand, i.e., you can watch the videos any time.

Keynote sessions

Each day we will have a live keynote with subsequent live questions. So be there!

A detailed schedule can be found at MIDL 2021 Program

Paper submission and reviewing has closed the proceedings are in preparation. The information below are only for reference.

MIDL 2021 submissions follow two tracks: full and short papers. All accepted full papers will be published as a volume in the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research. We will be using openreview.net as a submission and reviewing platform, with a two-week period for author rebuttal and discussion for full-paper submissions.

Full papers contain methodological developments or well-validated applications of deep learning algorithms in medical imaging. The paper length is strictly limited to 8 pages with as many extra pages as needed for the references, the acknowledgements and appendix section (all in a single pdf). The papers will go through a full, single-blind reviewing process via OpenReview, with a two-week period for author rebuttal and discussion. A selection of full papers will be invited for oral presentation. All accepted full papers will be published as a volume in the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research.

Short papers are strictly limited to 3 pages (including references) and can, for example, focus on novel methodological ideas without extensive validation. We also specifically accept short papers discussing recently published or submitted journal contributions to give authors the opportunity to present their work and obtain feedback from conference attendees. Selection of short papers is based on a light single-blind review process via OpenReview, without a discussion period. All accepted short papers will be presented at the conference.

To submit a paper, authors need to have an updated OpenReview account. Visit http://openreview.net/profile after logging in.

OpenReview conference website

After the registration period is over the Submission button will be inactive. To upload your pdf, select your paper and press “Revision”.

Inquiries to the program chairs can be addressed directly to [email protected].

Paper registration step (important)

To be able to upload the PDF of a full or short paper before the submission deadlines, authors have to create a submission on openreview with title, abstract and author information a week in advance (paper registration deadline).

Latex template

To prepare your submission to MIDL 2021 either as a full or short paper, please use the LaTeX style files provided at: https://github.com/MIDL-Conference/MIDLLatexTemplate.

Dual submission policy

Full papers

Submissions that are substantially similar to papers that have been previously published, or accepted for publication, or that are submitted in parallel to other conferences with proceedings or journals, are not allowed.

Short papers

In addition to original work, authors can choose to submit a shortened version of a recently (within the year 2019 or 2020) published, or submitted, journal publication to foster dissemination of high-quality work. Submissions that are substantially similar to versions that have been accepted or submitted in parallel to other conferences with proceedings are not allowed.

In both cases, dual submission of your paper to a non-peer reviewed website like arXiv is allowed. Similarly, submissions that have been presented at non-archival workshops (i.e., venues that do not have publication proceedings or publish only a very short abstract) do not violate the policy.

The policy is enforced during the whole reviewing process period.

Review Process

  1. Submissions can be made either as a full or short paper.
  2. Submissions are uploaded on OpenReview. The official reviews will be private during the review period, and will become publicly visible only after the reviews become available to authors.
  3. Public commenting (i.e. anybody who is logged in can post comments) becomes possible only after the decisions have been released and reviews are made available to authors. The author of a public comment can decide to post anonymously or not. Login is required before posting any comment.
  4. Submissions to MIDL will be single-blind (Reviewers can see author names when conducting reviews, but authors cannot see reviewer names), but reviewers have the option to sign the review.
  5. Short-paper submissions will undergo a lighter review, and do not have a period for rebuttal and author discussion.
  6. Reviews of full papers will be made available to authors on March 10th.
  7. The period from March 10th to March 22nd will be for open discussion between the authors and reviewers (full paper only), with the Area Chair guiding the discussion towards essential points.
  8. To submit your rebuttal and/or answer specific comments by the reviewers, please use the “official comments” button in OpenReview. During the rebuttal/discussion period, authors can update the pdf of a paper to highlight changes.
  9. On March 31st, authors will be notified about the acceptance or rejection of their paper (full paper). For short papers the decisions will be made available on May 12th.
  10. Once the process is complete and a final decision is reached, the authors can choose to delete rejected submissions from the OpenReview hosting site.
  11. Papers that are not accepted will be considered non-archival, and may be submitted elsewhere at the discretion of the authors. We strongly encourage taking into account the reviewers comments before resubmitting. During submission, the authors will have the option to indicate whether to have their submissions, the reviews, and the comments to be deleted from the OpenReview site, in case their submission is rejected.

Review Guidelines

We are committed to openness and transparency. We perform an open review process, have open access for all papers presented at MIDL, are transparent with regard to sponsorship packages and involvement from industry at the conference, provide freely available recordings of all presentations on the MIDL website, and we will urge MIDL contributors to use an open access policy as much as possible for the data and code. Reviews should be conducted with these guiding principles in mind.

  1. Reviewers should always provide positive, constructive reviews and be as open as possible.
  2. The review should include a short summary, a list of pros and cons and preferably ideas regarding related and future work.
  3. Comments regarding lack of novelty need to be substantiated, e.g. by providing reference(s) to previous work.
  4. Reviewers can be anonymous but they are eligible for the outstanding reviewer award only if they sign the review.
  5. Reviewers should engage in discussion with the authors during the rebuttal period.