Welcome to My Page !

Hi! I'm Shunsuke Kikuchi, a research engineer at Jmees Inc., a project researcher at National Cancer Center Hospital East, and an MRes student in Medical Robotics & Image-Guided Intervention at Imperial College London. I'm interested in machine learning, surgical navigation, precision medicine, and medical robotics. Originally from the Tokyo metropolitan area, I studied in the United States from 2021 to 2025 and graduated from UCLA with a double major in Computational and Systems Biology and Applied Mathematics. I aim to become a researcher in the field of AI in medicine. In my free time, I enjoy jogging, manga/anime, and traveling. Also as a Kaggle enthusiast, I have participated in various competitions and challenge workshops. Usually choose to work on video-related competition, but I'm also curious about other fields, including 3D reconstruction, segmentation, and reinforcement learning.
Explore my work, research, and achievements below!

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News

Research

Stitch-Inferencer: Enhance Endoscopic Video Segmentation and Tracking via Panoramic Reconstruction

Jmees Inc.

Effective surgical video understanding requires the clear decomposition of the surgical scene into foreground elements, such as surgical tools, and background anatomical structures. This research applies image stitching techniques to surgical videos to enable the automated removal and inpainting of specific objects based on ground truth data. By generating a stabilized, wide-angle view, we aim to enhance the temporal consistency of model predictions for downstream tasks, including segmentation, tracking, and phase classification. Furthermore, providing contextual information from outside the current frame allows the model to improve its overall predictive accuracy and robustness.

Related research outputs and applications:

  • Cholec80-port (CARS 2026): During the development of Stitch-Inferencer, we created and publicly released a geometrically consistent trocar port segmentation dataset required for the research. The paper was accepted to CARS 2026 and will appear in the IJCARS supplement. Read the paper
  • MVAA Challenge 2026 solution (MICCAI 2026 Workshop on Medical World Models): We applied the Stitch-Inferencer pipeline to tool-free view generation as part of our challenge solution. The solution paper was accepted to the workshop. Read the paper

Nov 2025 – Present. Leading the project as the first author. Accepted to the MICCAI 2026 Workshop SafeSurg. Read the paper

Phase Recognition of Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Toward Robotic Automation

National Cancer Center East Hospital, Japan

In total hysterectomy, a uterine manipulator is used to stabilize the uterus and ensure safe resection. However, during robot-assisted surgery, intraoperative manipulation of the device cannot be controlled directly by the surgeon, highlighting the need for automation. In this research, we aim to develop a surgical phase classification model that recognizes the manipulator's angle from endoscopic video. The annotation scheme is being refined through close collaboration and repeated discussion between clinicians and annotators to ensure it is suitable for deep learning models.

April 2025 – Present. Working as a project researcher.

scGRNdb

Dr. Xia Yang's Lab @ UCLA

SCING is a machine learning model that predicts gene regulatory networks from single-cell & spatial transcriptomics data. Using GRNs from SCING, we are developing scGRNdb, an analysis pipeline with a database of gene regulatory networks for single-cell and spatial transcriptomics data. I was involved in the part of designing community detection algorithm, pipeline development, and Evaluations.

23 Winter - 25 Spring. Working as an Undergraduate Research Assistant.

Temporal Memory Augmentation Module (TMAM)

Jmees Inc.

TMAM a novel framework that adapts any existing 2D segmentation model for video processing by transferring SAM2's memory encoder and attention modules. TMAM applies a memory encoder to past-frame predictions and uses memory attention to refine current-frame features. By leveraging the inherent temporal redundancy in video sequences, TMAM captures contextual cues that may be overlooked by single-frame processing, thereby improving robustness to occlusions and boundary artifacts.

24 Winter - 25 Spring. Leading the project as the first author of the paper.

Read More

Clinical Trial of Potential Migraine Drug on Rodent Model

Dr. Jennifer Xie's Lab @ Arkansas State University

This research proposes to investigate the efficacy of RgIA4, a selective α9α10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonist, in alleviating migraine-related pain using rodent models. The study will evaluate RgIA4's dose- and time-dependent effects in rat and mouse models by inducing migraines through environmental stress and inflammatory mediators. The research aims to determine whether blocking α9α10 nAChR can reduce pain and inflammatory responses, potentially offering a new therapeutic approach for migraines with fewer side effects and a reduced risk of medication overuse headaches.

21 Fall - 23 Summer. Working as an Undergraduate Research Scholor.

Publications

2026

Kikuchi, S., Kouno, A., & Matsuzaki, H. “Stitch-Inferencer: Enhance Endoscopic Video Segmentation and Tracking via Panoramic Reconstruction.” MICCAI Workshop SafeSurg, 2026.

Cheng, M., Tran, J., Littman, R., Kikuchi, S., Ha, S. M., Yang, S., et al. “scGRNdb: A Database for over 1300 Cell-type-specific Global Gene Regulatory Networks across Human and Mouse Tissues Profiled in Single Cell Atlases.” Under review in Cell Systems, 2026.

Kikuchi, S., Kouno, A., & Matsuzaki, H. “Cholec80-port: A Geometrically Consistent Trocar Port Segmentation Dataset for Robust Surgical Scene Understanding.” To appear in the IJCARS supplement, Proceedings of CARS 2026.

Rueckert, T., Rauber, D., Maerkl, R., Klausmann, L., Yildiran, S. R., Kikuchi, S., et al. “Comparative Validation of Surgical Phase Recognition, Instrument Keypoint Estimation, and Instrument Instance Segmentation in Endoscopy: Results of the PhaKIR 2024 Challenge.” Medical Image Analysis, 103945, 2026.

Yang, K., Shi, P., Huang, H., Musio, F., Baazaoui, H., Aydin, O. U., et al., Kikuchi, S., et al. “TopBrain Segmentation Challenge for Whole Brain Vessel Anatomy.” medRxiv, 2026.05.28.26354312, 2026.

Hoffmann, H., Bady, S., de Boer, C., Kirchner, M., Egger, J., et al., Kikuchi, S., et al. “OSS: Open Suturing Skills Vision-Based Assessment Challenge 2024-2025.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.22200, 2026.

2025

Schmidt, A., Karaoglu, M. A., Sinha, S., Jang, M., Ha, H., Jung, K., Gu, K., Kikuchi, S., et al. “Point Tracking in Surgery: The 2024 Surgical Tattoos in Infrared (STIR) Challenge.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.24306, 2025.

Kikuchi, S., Kouno, A., & Matsuzaki, H. “Memory-Enhanced Temporal Learning: Leveraging SAM2's Memory Modules for Consistent Video Segmentation.” MICCAI Workshop MSB EMERGE, 2025.

2024

Ju, X., Daher, R., Caramalau, R., Huang, B., Ghamsarian, N., Kikuchi, S., et al. “SegCol Challenge: Semantic Segmentation for Tools and Fold Edges in Colonoscopy Data.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16078, 2024.

Kaggle


NeurIPS 2024 - Predict New Medicines with BELKA

Silver Medal (27/1950) (Leaderboard)

Compete with machine learning model which predict small molecule-protein interaction using the Big Encoded Library for Chemical Assessment (BELKA)

See more details of our solution here.

HMS - Harmful Brain Activity Classification

Bronze Medal (245/2767) (Leaderboard)

Compete with machine learning mode which classify seizures and other partterns of harmful brain activity in critically ill patients.

Conference Challenges


MICCAI 2026 Challenges


MICCAI 2026 Endoscopic Vision Challenge Cluster — CLiMB Challenge

Overall: 2nd

Presented our top solution at the MICCAI 2026 Endoscopic Vision Challenge Cluster in Strasbourg, France.

MICCAI 2026 Orena FOCUS Challenge

Frame: 4th   |   PROCEDURE: 4th

Presented our top solution at the MICCAI 2026 satellite event in Strasbourg, France.

MICCAI 2025 Challenges


MICCAI 2025 Lighthouse Challenge — SAGES CVS Challenge (Official site)

Task A (CVS Classification): 2nd Prize ($1,850)   |   Task B (Computationally Efficient, CPU-limited): 3rd Prize ($1,000)

This Lighthouse challenge was selected for its quality and scale within the MICCAI ecosystem.

  • Task A: Trained a 2.5D EVA-02 model in a multi-task setting (segmentation + depth). Careful EMA and hyperparameter tuning improved scores. At inference, compiler-based acceleration was used to meet strict time limits.
  • Task B: Trained a ResNeXt image classifier with multi-task learning (segmentation + depth). Exported to ONNX, optimized with ONNX-simplifier, and accelerated with ONNX Runtime CPU to satisfy the time constraint.

MICCAI 2025 TopBrain Challenge (Official site)

Segmentation Challenge for Whole Brain Vessel Anatomy: 3rd

  • Increased nnUNet training from the default 1000 to 3000 epochs based on prior experience.
  • Despite joining near the deadline and minimal iteration, achieved these results in a one-shot run.

MICCAI 2025 EndoVis — Open Suturing Skills Challenge (Official site)

GRS: 2nd   |   OSATS: 1st   |   TRACK: 1st

Overall objective: automatic assessment of suturing surgical skills.

  • GRS / OSATS: Used Swin3D and fine-tuned models trained on keypoints and depth. Added optical flow and foreground-focused views as auxiliary visual features.
  • TRACK: Used a ConvNeXt encoder with an FPN decoder. Fine-tuned keypoint heads with coordinate MSE and heatmap losses alongside a segmentation pretraining.

MICCAI 2025 EndoVis — RARE (Official site)

2nd

Primary challenge: building robust models for extremely rare positive cases with subtle visual cues in real-world settings.

  • Model 1: Pretrained with Masked Image Modeling on multiple external datasets, then fine-tuned on the challenge dataset.
  • Model 2: Fine-tuned a model pretrained for cancer segmentation.
  • Although the public leaderboard score was modest due to small-sample instability, we trusted the more reliable AUC metric and achieved a significant shake-up on the private leaderboard.

MICCAI 2024 Challenges


MICCAI Endoscopic Vision Challenge 2024: SegCol

Task 1 & 2: 1st Prize (Task1, 900€) and 2nd Prize (Task2, 400€)

4-class segmentation challenge for colorectal cancer screening using colonoscopy frames. Developed models to segment anatomy edges and instrument masks.

  • Task 1: Semantic segmentation for Surgical Tools and Colon Fold Edges
  • Task 2: Selecting set of images from pool to decide which images to annotate (Active Learning)

MICCAI Endoscopic Vision Challenge 2024: Open Suturing Skills Challenge

Task 1 & 2: 3rd Prize (Task1) & 3rd Prize (Task2)

Classification of surgical suturing skills using simulated environment videos.

  • Task 1: Predicting total Global Rating Score (GRS)
  • Task 2: Predicting full OSATS scoring table

For the bost tasks, perform surgical tools segmentation and detect tips of then, then put the movements of them into 1DCNN+GRU model to extract features. Final prediction is performed by GBDT.

MICCAI Endoscopic Vision Challenge 2024: STIR Challenge

Task 1 & 2: 3rd Prize(2D-tracking, $675) & 2nd Prize(3D-tracking, $450)

Predicting trajectories in surgical tatoos on tissues in robotic surgery video using the STIR (Surgical Tattoos in Infrared) Dataset.

  • 2D point tracking
  • 3D point tracking using stereo-manner left and right videos

MICCAI Endoscopic Vision Challenge 2024: PhaKIR

Phase Recognition: 2nd   |   Instrument Recognition: 1st

Phase, keypoint, and instrument recognition in endoscopic surgery. The challenge paper was published in Medical Image Analysis in 2026.

6th National Medical AI Contest in Japan

4th prize (10000 JPY) (Leaderboard)

The task was Semantic segmentation of Mutli-Organ, using one of the largest dataset, TotalSegmentator. Segmented organs include gallbladder, liver, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, adrenal glands, aorta, stomach, and duodenum.

For the best model, we employed 3D-UNet approached with large backbone architecutre SeresNext50x4d, with UNet++ and scse block. Achieved >0.89 in mean DSC. Experimental Source Codes and solutions are here

Experience


Research Engineer

Jmees Inc. | October 2025 - Present

  • Conducting R&D to integrate insights from research and MICCAI challenges into the company's surgical AI products.
  • Developed video segmentation methods using image stitching and an expanded field of view for tool-free view generation and temporally consistent segmentation.

Research Intern

Jmees Inc. | June 2024 - September 2025

  • Developed video segmentation models for a hysterectomy surgical support system affiliated with National Cancer Center Japan.
  • Participated in MICCAI challenges focused on surgical video understanding and segmentation.

Project Researcher

National Cancer Center Hospital East, Gynecology Department | April 2025 - Present

  • Conducting surgical navigation research with clinicians and surgical experts.
  • Working on phase-classification-based surgical skill evaluation in total hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy.

Curriculum Vitae

You can download my CV in PDF format below:

Download CV