Conference Link: http://www.biodevices.biostec.org

Foreword: This book contains the proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021). This conference is sponsored by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC), and technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (IEEE EMB) and held in cooperation with the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM SIGAI), the ACM Special Interest Group on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Biomedical Informatics (ACM SIGBIO), the ACM Special Interest Group on Management Information Systems (ACM SIGMIS), the ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (ACM SIGACCESS), the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the International Society for Computational Biology (iSCB), the Finnish Society for Medical Physics and Medical Engineering, the Swiss Society for Biomedical Engineering (SSBE), the German Society for Biomedical Engineering (VDE DGBMT), the Société Française du Génie Biologique et Médical (SFGBM) and the TELIGHT. This year BIOSTEC was, exceptionally, held as a web-based event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from 11 - 13 February. The purpose of BIOSTEC is to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in both theoretical advances and applications of information systems, artificial intelligence, signal processing, electronics and other engineering tools in knowledge areas related to biology and medicine. BIOSTEC is composed of five complementary and co-located conferences, each specialized in at least one of the aforementioned main knowledge areas: - International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices – BIODEVICES; - International Conference on Bioimaging – BIOIMAGING; - International Conference on Bioinformatics Models, Methods and Algorithms – BIOINFORMATICS; - International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing – BIOSIGNALS; - International Conference on Health Informatics – HEALTHINF. The purpose of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices (BIODEVICES) is to bring together researchers and practitioners from electronics, mechanical engineering, physics and related areas who are interested in developing, studying and using innovative materials, devices and systems inspired by biological systems and/or addressing biomedical requirements. Monitoring and diagnostics devices, sensors and instrumentation systems, biorobotics and prosthetics, micro-nanotechnologies including microfluidics systems and biomaterials are some of the technologies addressed at this conference. The fabrication and evaluation of biodevices, including wearable and implantable devices is also addressed. The International Conference on Bioimaging (BIOIMAGING) covers the complex chain of acquiring, processing and visualizing structural or functional images of living objects or systems, including extraction and processing of image-related information. Examples of image modalities used in bioimaging are many, including: X-ray, CT, MRI and fMRI, PET and HRRT PET, SPECT, MEG, Phase-Sensitive and Non-Linear Optics, and so on. Medical imaging and microscope/fluorescence/Raman image processing are important parts of bioimaging referring to the techniques and processes used to create images of the human body, anatomical areas, tissues, and so on, down to the molecular level, for clinical purposes, seeking to reveal, diagnose, or examine diseases, or medical science, including the study of normal anatomy and physiology. Both classic image processing methods (e.g. denoising, segmentation, deconvolution and registration methods, feature recognition and classification) and modern machine, in particular deep learning, artificial intelligence techniques represent an indispensable part of bioimaging, as well as related data analysis and statistical tools. The International Conference on Bioinformatics Models, Methods and Algorithms (BIOINFORMATICS) aims to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the design and application of modelling frameworks, algorithmic concepts, computational methods, and information technologies to address challenging problems in Bioinformatics and Biomedical research. There is a tremendous need to explore how mathematical, statistical and computational techniques can be used to better understand biological processes and systems, while developing new methodologies and tools to analyze the massive currently-available biological data. Areas of interest to this community include systems biology and biological networks (regulatory, neuronal, predator-prey, ecological ones, etc.), sequence analysis, biostatistics, graph models, image analysis, scientific data management and data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition, computational evolutionary biology, structural bioinformatics, computational genomics and proteomics, and related areas. The goal of the International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing (BIOSIGNALS) is to bring together researchers and practitioners from multiple areas of expertise, including biology, medicine, and engineering and as well as computer and data science, interested in studying and using models and techniques inspired from or applied to biological systems. A diversity of signal types can be found in this area, including video, audio, electrophysiological signals, medical imaging, and other biological sources of information. The analysis and use of these signals is a multidisciplinary area including signal processing, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence techniques, amongst others. The International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF) aims to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the specification, design, development and application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare and medicine in general, and to the support of persons with special needs in particular. Big data, networking, graphical interfaces, data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition and intelligent decision support systems are just a few of the technologies and research areas currently contributing to medical informatics. Mobility and ubiquity in healthcare systems, physiological and behavioral modelling, standardization of health records, procedures, and technologies, certification, privacy and security are some of the issues that medical informatics professionals and the ICT industry and research community in general are addressing to further promote ICT in healthcare. In the case of medical rehabilitation, assistive technologies and home monitoring, research in and applications of ICT have contributed greatly to the enhancement of quality of life and full integration of all citizens into society. The conference is also enriched by the satellite events organized with the conference, namely: - Workshop on Scaling-Up Healthcare with Conversational Agents - Scale-IT-up 2021 - Workshop on Novel Computational Paradigms, Methods and Approaches in Bioinformatics - Paradigms-Methods-Approaches 2021 - Special session on Non-invasive Diagnosis and Neuro-stimulation in Neurorehabilitation Tasks - NDNSNT 2021 - Special session on Dealing with the Change in European Regulations for Medical Devices - ClinMed 2021 The BIOSTEC includes a Doctoral Consortium on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies that brought together Ph.D. students within the biomedical field to discuss their research in an international forum. In 2021, BIOSTEC features four invited talks delivered by internationally distinguished speakers: Athanasios Tsanas (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom), Thomas Ostermann (Universität Witten/Herdecke, Germany), Mireya Fernández Chimeno (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain) and Tiago Guerreiro (Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal). The BIOSTEC joint conference received 317 paper submissions from 54 countries in all continents, of which 22% were accepted as full papers. The submission’s high quality imposed difficult choices during the review process. To evaluate each submission, a double blind paper review was performed by the Program Committee, whose members are highly qualified independent researchers in the five BIOSTEC Conferences’ topic areas. As in previous editions of BIOSTEC, based on the reviewers’ evaluations and on the quality of the presentations, a short list of authors will be selected and invited to submit extended revised versions of their papers for a book that will be published by Springer with the best papers of BIOSTEC 2021. A short list of papers presented at the BIOSTEC will also be selected for publication of extended and revised versions in a special issue of Springer Nature Computer Science Journal. We would like to express our thanks to all participants. First of all, to the authors, whose quality work is the essence of this joint conference. Next, we thank all the members of the program committee and the auxiliary reviewers for their diligence and expert reviewing. Also, we would like to deeply thank the invited speakers for their excellent contribution in sharing their knowledge and vision. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the professional support of the INSTICC team for all organizational processes, especially given the need to introduce online streaming, forum management, direct messaging facilitation and other web-based activities in order to make it possible for authors to present their work and share ideas with colleagues in spite of the logistic difficulties caused by the current pandemic situation. We hope that the papers accepted and included in the proceedings will be helpful references in future works for all those who need to address topics in any of the BIOSTEC knowledge areas. We wish you all an inspiring conference and we hope to meet you next year for BIOSTEC 2022, details of which will soon be available at http://www.biostec.org. (More)

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