Motivation: Despite the growing awareness on health disparities, there still remains an important gap in research efforts and funding between men’s and women’s health. To highlight the disparity in attention to women’s health issues, a PubMed’s request on December 9, 2025, on the two most common gender-specific surgeries returned 27,406 results for “radical prostatectomy”, and only 5,140 for “radical hysterectomy,” illustrating almost an order of magnitude more research interest in male-specific over female-specific medicine. This imbalance in research extends to the clinic, with the FDA having 13 approved imaging AI algorithms for prostate cancer radiology and none for ovarian, endometrial, or cervical cancers [1].

Women’s health is not limited to only pathologies that uniquely affect them but extend to those that are more frequent in women and those with key differences in their presentation between men and women. All of these areas have been under-researched as shown by 12 of the 13 areas identified by Smith [2] as underfunded predominantly affecting women over men. This lack of research funding and interest contributes to gender differences in what technologies enter patient care. In this workshop, we will specifically focus on imaging and computer assisted interventions for pathologies that are specific to women, such as gynecological disorders, reproductive health issues, and conditions influenced by hormonal differences.

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[1] “Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Medical Devices” https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/software-medical-device-samd/artificial-intelligence-enabled-medical-devices (Accessed Dec 11, 2025)
[2] Smith, Kerri. The funding gender gap. Nature, 2023, vol. 617, no 7959, p. 28-29.