María Castro Férnandez
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María Castro Férnandez

My Research Stay at Visual Intelligence: María Castro Fernández

María Castro Fernández is a PhD Candidate at the Research Institute of Applied Microelectronics at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in Spain. She visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from January to June 2024.

My Research Stay at Visual Intelligence: María Castro Fernández

María Castro Fernández is a PhD Candidate at the Research Institute of Applied Microelectronics at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in Spain. She visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø as a guest researcher from January to June 2024.

By: Petter Bjørklund, Communication Advisor at Visual Intelligence.

Can you tell us about your PhD project?

My PhD project is centered on skin cancer detection with deep learning techniques. At first, I focused on light-weighted neural networks and improving their performance with attention mechanism, always using dermoscopic images. However, at some point, I found out about the potential use of hyperspectral images in the medical field and decided to incorporate them into my project. Nowadays my biggest interest lies in analyzing the variability between skin lesions and patients in dermoscopic and hyperspectral images and how it affects the training of neural networks.

Why did you choose Tromsø and Visual Intelligence for your research stay?

The decision to come to Tromsø was quite natural for me. My supervisor, Gustavo Marrero Callicó, and professor Fred Godtliebsen have been collaborating for many years, so Tromsø has always been on the map for our research group. Additionally, I was looking for a suitable location to collect data for my project. As Norway is one of the countries with the highest rates of skin cancer cases per 100 000 inhabitants, it made a Norwegian city like Tromsø a lucrative choice. Furthermore, Visual Intelligence and the UiT Machine Learning Group is well-known for their research on interpretable and explainable AI models, making the decision all the more straightforward.

What has been the main outcomes of your research stay?

Scientifically, the main outcomes of my research stay have been the collection of a dataset of clinical, dermoscopic, and hyperspectral images of skin lesions, obtained at the University Hospital of North Norway (UNN). In addition, I have become involved in an incipient study on the uncertainty estimation of dermoscopic image classification, in collaboration with Iver Martinsen, Samuel Ortega, Miguel Tejedor, and Fred Godtliebsen.  I look forward to continuing the collaboration with Visual Intelligence and I am grateful for their genuine hospitality, which made my stay even more enriching.

How was life in Tromsø?

Living in Tromsø was a great experience. Since I visited the city from January to June, I got to witness both the polar night and the midnight sun. The surroundings are breathtaking and the city is surprisingly lively, full of international and very welcoming local people. I can confidently say that I will cherish this experience for a long time.

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