Geert Litjens
Assistant Professor of Computational Pathology
Computational Pathology Group
Diagnostic Image Analysis Group
Radboud University Medical Center
Biography
Geert Litjens is an assistant professor of Computational Pathology at the Radboud University Medical Center. His research is at the intersection of machine learning, medical imaging, and oncology. He co-chairs the Computational Pathology Group, which develops automated machine learning systems for cancer detection, biomarker discovery and quantification, and improved prognostication.
He is also the developer of the ASAP software package for analyzing and visualizing whole-slide images and (co-)organizer of several high-profile challenges in medical imaging such as PROMISE12, CAMELYON, and PANDA. He (co-)authored over 60 publications in medical, imaging, and machine learning conferences and journals.
- Computational Pathology
- Machine Learning
- Medical Imaging
- Oncology
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PhD in Medical Sciences, 2015
Radboud University Medical Center
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MSc in Biomedical Image Analysis, 2010
Eindhoven University of Technology
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BSc in Biomedical Engineering, 2006
Eindhoven University of Technology
Experience
Grants & Awards
ERC Starting Grant
- Organisation: ERC
- Year: 2022
- Amount: 1.5 M€
- Role: PI
Vidi Grant
- Organisation: NWO
- Year: 2021
- Amount: 800 k€
- Role: PI
Radboud - Maastricht Collaboration Grant
- Organisation: Radboudumc
- Year: 2021
- Amount: 100 k€
- Role: PI
HealthHolland Public-Private Partnership Grant
- Organisation: KNAW
- Year: 2020
- Amount: 800 k€
- Role: PI
PANCAIM Grant
- Organisation: EU
- Year: 2021
- Amount: 350 k€ (CPG)
- Role: Participant
IMI BigPicture Grant
- Organisation: IMI
- Year: 2021
- Amount: 70 M€ (entire project), 9 M€ (AI WP), 2.5 M€ (CPG)
- Role: co-PI and WP lead
KNAW Early Career Award
- Organisation: KNAW
- Year: 2020
- Amount: 15 k€
Radboud Institute for Health Sciences Junior Researcher
- Organisation: RIHS
- Year: 2019
- Amount: 250 k€
- Role: PI
Radboud Science Award
- Organisation: Radboud University
- Year: 2018
StITpro Pathologie II Grant
- Organisation: StITPro
- Year: 2017
- Amount: 220 k€
- Role: co-PI
Veni Grant
- Organisation: NWO
- Year: 2017
- Amount: 250 k€
- Role: PI
Bas Mulder / Young Investigator Grant
- Organisation: Dutch Cancer Association
- Year: 2016
- Amount: 719 k€
- Role: PI
Radboud Institute of Health Sciences Best PhD Thesis - Runner-up
- Organisation: Radboud Institute of Health Sciences
- Year: 2015
Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Organisation: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung
- Year: 2015
- Amount: 25 k€
- Role: PI
Robert F. Wagner Best Student Paper Award - Runner-up
- Organisation: SPIE
- Year: 2014
MICCAI Student Travel Award
- Organisation: MICCAI
- Year: 2012
CPG indicates funding for the Computational Pathology Group
Selected Publications
This is a selection of the publications I am most proud of. For a full listing, please go to this page.
Organized Scientific Meetings
PANDA Challenge Workshop
- Roles: Organizer
- Year: 2020
Medical Imaging meets NeurIPS Workshop
- Roles: Program Committee Member
- Year: 2018 - now
MICCAI COMPAY Workshop
- Roles: Program Committee Member
- Year: 2018 - now
ISUP Gleason Grading Consensus Panel
- Roles: Member
- Year: 2019
MIDL (Medical Imaging with Deep Learning) Conference
- Roles: Program Chair, Program Committee Member, Board Member
- Year: 2018 - now
SPIE Medical Imaging
- Role: Program Committee
- Year: 2018 - now
Computation Pathology Symposium at the European Conference of Pathology
- Roles: Organizing Committee Member
- Year: 2016 - now
CAMELYON16/17 Challenge Workshops
- Roles: Organizer
- Year: 2016, 2017
PROMISE12 Challenge Workshop
- Roles: Organizer
- Year: 2012
Invited Lectures
Center for Biomedical AI Seminar
- Location: UKE, Hamburg, Germany (Virtual)
- Year: 2021
AIMI-IBIIS Seminar
- Location: Stanford University, USA (Virtual)
- Year: 2021
Health Valley
- Location: Nijmegen, the Netherlands (Virtual)
- Year: 2020
Bayer Prostate Cancer Academy
- Location: Baarn, the Netherlands
- Year: 2019
Swedish Deep Learning Conference
- Location: Norrköping, Sweden
- Year: 2019
Nordic Pathology Symposium
- Location: Linköping, Sweden
- Year: 2019
NWO Bessensap
- Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Year: 2018
Dutch Pathology Days
- Location: Ede, the Netherlands
- Year: 2018
Pathology Visions Conference
- Location: San Diego, United States of America
- Year: 2017
Congress Dutch Pediatric Medicine Society
- Location: Arnhem, the Netherlands
- Year: 2017
ISBI CAMELYON17 Workshop
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Year: 2017
MICCAI Medical Computer Vision Workshop
- Location: Athens, Greece
- Year: 2016
MICCAI Computational Precision Medicine Workshop
- Location: Athens, Greece
- Year: 2016
Digital Pathology Congress
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Year: 2016
European Conference of Pathology - Computational Pathology Symposium
- Location: Cologne, Germany
- Year: 2016
Skills
Extensive experience with Python for data science and machine learning. Often used package include Numpy, Scipy, Tensorflow, Theano, and Matplotlib.
I used C++ for the development of image analysis algorithms using ITK and MeVisLab. In addition, ASAP is an open source Qt-based C++ application, developed for both Windows and Linux.
All software and algorithms I develop are under version control. Nowadays, we make extensive use of Git and Github for source code management.
Since 2014 my research has focused on challenges in diagnostic pathology. This has helped me attain knowledge on pathologist’s workflows in many applications, with emphasis on those in oncology.
During my MSc and PhD theses I worked at a major radiology hardware vendor and at a radiology department. I have some experience with all imaging modalities common in radiology, but most expertise with different types of MR imaging.
I have taken several (bio-)statistics courses and have working experience with advanced statistical methods. Examples include survival analysis and mixed models.
Since 2013 I have been developing algorithms based on deep learning, initially with Theano, later with TensorFlow. My initial work and that of many others is covered in our [survey]({{< ref “/publication/litj-17/index.md” >}}).
I have been working on image processing tools for over a decade and have applied, among others, image registration, filtering, and morphological image processing in different projects.
Dutch: native
English: fluent
German: intermediate
French: basic