SynthOCT Challenge 2026

Dr. Lev Matveev (Russian Academy of Sciences)

PhD. Samuel Remedios (Johns Hopkins University)

Prof. Azhar Zam (New York University)

Prof. Taimur Hassan (Abu Dhabi University)

Evaluation & Benchmark Leads:

Denis Nikoshin (HSE University)

Daniil Mikhailenko (HSE University)

Team Registration: Due June 30 → Extended through July 8 (via registration form).

Preliminary Submission: Due July 10 → Due July 18 (upload digital phantoms).

Proceedings / phantom submission: Due July 18.

Final Submission: Due July 14 → Due August 14 (Code and/or model, or a link to them, via this platform and full paper via OpenReview link).

Initial Decision: by July 29 → July 28 (initial reviews for proceedings).

Late August: Testing of submitted algorithms on the hold-out dataset.

MICCAI 2026: Final rankings announced at the challenge session.

Code Availability: Please make sure that your complete code is made public in a repository (e.g., GitHub) if your paper is accepted.

Presentation & attendance policy: Due to the relocation of MICCAI 2026 from Abu Dhabi to Strasbourg, online participation will be provided in specific cases.

Online participation is allowed if: (1) a team consists of members whose passport/citizenship requires a visa to enter France; (2) for participants (e.g., based in the US) who anticipate visa or re-entry problems when returning to their country of residence.

In-person participation is mandatory for participating teams that have members currently living and working within the Schengen zone.

Presentation Requirement: Please note that this OCT Challenge is a part of the SASHIMI Workshop. For accepted papers, an in-person presentation is mandatory, meaning at least one author must attend to present the results.

1) Download the Dataset: Please download the official dataset from Zenodo.

2) Access the Baseline: Obtain the baseline codes from our GitHub repository and carefully review the provided instructions there. You will also find the standalone OCT Virtual Scanner there.

3) Register Your Team: before June 30 → before July 8! (Upon registration, you will be granted access to our online portal to upload your digital phantoms for preliminary validation). To avoid any technical issues, please also notify us via email regarding your team's registration at drlevmatveev@gmail.com

4) Develop Your Tissue-Mimicking Digital Phantom Generator: Develop a digital phantom generator that outputs a scatterer distribution suitable for the Virtual Scanner (provided within the baseline and via API) and replicates the real input OCT scan as closely as possible after virtual scanning. Please ensure you test it yourself prior to submission. Please also ensure that your code and model are runnable on a PC with 16GB RAM and an RTX 3060 12GB (Windows 10/11). We highly recommend ensuring compatibility with Python 3.12.12 and PyTorch 2.10.0; please verify in advance that your code runs successfully in this specific environment. Additionally, the maximum runtime for generating one phantom with scatterers based on a real B-scan must not exceed 600 seconds per B-scan. These are the maximum hardware and runtime requirements.

5) Preliminary Submission: Submit before July 10 → before July 18 your first set of digital phantoms (.txt files of scatterer distributions) for preliminary validation. The platform will run Virtual Scanner on the server and compute metrics automatically.

6) Final Submission: Submit your full paper and code/model by July 14 → by August 14. Please note that full paper submissions and the peer review process will be conducted mandatorily via OpenReview (the submission link will be provided soon). To determine your final score and ranking, your submitted approach will be executed by the organizers on a hidden, hold-out test dataset.