Meet the patients we climbed for in the Atlas Mountains!

Our team was in Marrakech, Morocco for the 2024 MICCAI conference. This conference brings together computer scientists, data scientists, engineers and clinicians to talk about the advances in medical imaging and computer aided intervention. Our team has been to this conference regularly and this is the conference we’ve held the KITS Challenge.

This year we were presenting our novel concept of AI Age. We trained a model to predict age based on CT scan prior to kidney surgery. Surprisingly what the model ‘thinks’ the patient’s age is, is more predictive than the patient’s actual age, when trying to estimate time in the hospital after cancer surgery and overall survival.

Only 60 miles away stood Mt. Toubkal, the tallest mountain in the Atlas Mountains and all of Northern Africa at 13,671 feet. We rose early and drove to Imlil, through the dry Moroccan countryside. The arid, rocky crags, spare vegetation and clear skies rhyme with the mountain west of the United States. We started up and hiked 9 miles to the mountain hut high in the Atlas mountains. A guide is required to climb. Though the mountain is not difficult, it was nice to have someone to talk to and help us gain insight into the local culture. We stopped along the way to eat lunch and met travelers from around the world, though mostly from Europe.

Mountain huts are cool places, full of interesting people from all over. We met climbers from Belgium, France, Poland, the US, Spain, and Slovakia to name a few. We ate dinner and got into bed, but sleeping in a mountain hut hardly ever happens. Its not just the anticipation and nerves and the early hour of the alpine start (usually 3-4 am), but the snoring, the farting, the laughing about the farting. It is almost a certainty when you have 16 people tightly packed into a room that at least 7 will have to go to the bathroom during the night, and make an inordinate amount of noise even while trying to be quiet. At least two will also shine their head torches into your face (on accident) and make sleeping even more impossible by whispering, “Oh I’m sorry,” loud enough to wake any others who against all odds had actually fallen asleep. If all 7 went at the same time, it would be fine and you could drift off to sleep, but it seems that all 7 must have collaborated to space their departures and arrivals apart just enough that it feels like someone is going to the bathroom all night long. And it also seems that all 7 that need to go to the bathroom will be on the top bunks so they make extra noise climbing down the ladder.

Finally, around 130 am, the bathroom goers are settling in and then you notice if you are on the top bunk, the heat of those 16 people has filled the room and risen. And while it is below freezing temps outside, inside on the top bunk, it is approaching 90 degrees F. To stay comfortable, you need to start taking off you clothes. The beanie, long off, now is followed by, blankets, shirts, pants and now you are just sweating in your underwear begging for the morning hour to arrive. 3 am finally came and we got up at breakfast and started up.