| The medical
imaging community has been deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague
Robert N. Beck of the University of Chicago, one of the pioneers
in the field, and the first recipient the Edward J. Hoffman Medical
Imaging Scientist Award, our most prestigious award. See below in
this Newsletter for his obituary.
An election for five new members of the NMIS Council was held in
October. Our new members are Irène Buvat, Georges El Fakhri,
Kris Iniewski, Ronald Jaszczak, and Ray Muzic, Jr. We welcome them
and thank our outgoing members Anna Celler, Magnus Dahlbom, James
Hugg, Yuan-Chuan Tai, and Dimitris Visvikis for their service. Five
new members are elected to NMISC each year, and we always welcome
new candidates. If you are interested in standing for election,
please contact me.
The term of Ronald Jaszczak, one of our two NPSS AdCom representatives,
expired this year and an election for his successor was won by Tom
Lewellen. We congratulate Tom and express our sincere thanks to
Ron for his four years of active, effective representation of us
on AdCom, especially his work as a liaison to the IEEE Special Interest
Group on Bio & Health Sciences, and the IEEE Biometrics Council.
I would also like to express our appreciation to Craig Woody, the
outgoing Chair of the Joint NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee of NMISC
and RISC. The Oversight Subcommittee is responsible for selecting
the site and General Chair of future NSS/MIC meetings, and Craig
has put in a great deal of work in the past few years guiding us
to the successful selection of several sites. Craig is resigning
in order to assume his duties as the incoming President of the Society.
Tom Lewellen will be taking over as the new Chair of the Oversight
Subcommittee.
The annual meeting of the NMISC was held October 23, 2008 in Dresden,
Germany, in conjunction with the MIC. Following are some of the
highlights:
The NMISC passed three motions to AdCom during the year: that the
values of the Edward J Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award and
the Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award be increased
to $3000 and $1500 respectively, and that the Young Investigator
Award be renamed in honor of Bruce Hasegawa. These motions have
been approved by NPSS AdCom and are awaiting final approval by the
IEEE Technical Activities Board in early 2009.
Paul Kinahan, Chair of the Awards Subcommittee, announced that the
2008 Edward J Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award winner was
Christopher J. Thompson “for contributions to the development
of positron emission tomography systems.” The Young Investigator
Medical Imaging Science Award winner was Katsuyuki “Ken”
Taguchi “for contributions to multi-slice x-ray CT, cardiac
CT, and four-dimensional CT imaging.” Congratulations to Chris
and Ken for these well-deserved honors, and our sincere thanks to
Paul, who is stepping down as Awards Chair, for his very effective
service over the past three years. Paul will be succeeded as Awards
Chair by Anna Celler.
Eric Frey, 2007 MIC Program Chair, gave us a final report on this
meeting. It’s too lengthy to reproduce here in full, but a
few highlights are: a total of 564 papers (84% of submissions) were
accepted to the MIC, with 144 oral and 420 poster presentations;
there were 20 parallel oral sessions and 4 poster sessions over
4 days; a popular innovation was the early morning tutorials on
topics of high interest; there were 1750 paid registrants to the
NSS/MIC and the conference was financially successful with total
income of nearly $1.25M USD.
The 2008 MIC Program Chair, Wolfgang Enghardt, gave us an update
on the on-going meeting. 619 papers (81% of submissions) were accepted
to the MIC with 99 oral and 520 poster presentations. These were
presented in 12 non-parallel oral sessions and 2 poster sessions.
There were approximately 2500 paid registrants to the 2008 NSS/MIC,
making it the largest ever. The winner of the MIC Student Paper
Award was G. Pratx, et al., “Fast, Accurate and Shift-Varying
Line Projections for Iterative Reconstruction Using the GPU”
(M06-309), and the runner-up award went to C. Thibaudeau, et al.,
“Iterative CT Reconstruction Using LabPET™ Detector
Modules” (M06-361).
Patrick Le Dû, the NPSS Transnational Committee's Conference
Liaison, presented an interesting analysis of trends in recent NSS/MIC
meeting statistics. The meeting continues to grow rapidly in size.
It’s consistently significantly larger when held in Europe
than it is in North America. Asia-Pacific participation appears
to be growing. These data are valuable to inform our discussions
of how growth and location of the meeting should be managed.
Ron Jaszczak presented a report on his AdCom activities. A Biometrics
Council has formed in IEEE and is organizing conferences, but so
far there is not much overlap with the MIC. AdCom continues working
to get NIH-funded articles published in the IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.
to become publicly available in PubMed Central within 12 months,
as required by NIH. NPSS has created a prestigious new Marie Sklodowska-Curie
Award that comes with a bronze medal and a $10,000 cash prize. Ron
also suggested we give attention to creating an overarching web
site for NSS/MIC that describes what we do and is more consistent
with NPSS and other IEEE web sites, particularly to help give us
greater visibility as part of the new IEEE Bio SIG.
Craig Woody gave us a report on the work of his Joint NSS/MIC Oversight
Subcommittee and solicited input from NMISC. He described the factors
considered when choosing a site and discussed the process followed
for the selection of Valencia in 2011. The NMISC expressed some
concern over the rising cost of attending the meeting and how this
impacts regional attendance. Craig described considerations going
into the decisions for 2012 and 2013.
Finally, here’s an update on plans for future Medical Imaging
Conferences:
The 2009 NSS/MIC will be held in Orlando, Florida, in the Hilton
Hotel near Downtown Disney. Richard Lanza is the General Chair,
Ramsey Badawi is the MIC Program Chair and Craig Levin will be the
Deputy MIC Program Chair. Program planning for the Medical Imaging
Conference is well under way. In a new approach, this year's MIC
will have a theme, which is “Translating Scientific Concepts
into Practical Reality”. Plenary sessions during the meeting
will include contributions from medical practitioners and from workers
in industry, with a view to provoking discussion on how novel developments
presented at the conference can be translated into devices and methods
that will have a clinical impact. As in other years, there will
be a range of special focus workshops short courses, and we anticipate
a very exciting program.
Knoxville, Tennessee, will host the 2010 NSS/MIC. Ron Keyser is
the General Chair and David Townsend will serve as the MIC Program
Chair. The meeting itself will be held in the spacious Knoxville
Convention Center, but housing will be distributed among several
downtown hotels. The organizing committee is complete and held its
first meeting during the Dresden MIC in October.
The 2011 NSS/MIC will be in Valencia, Spain. Valencia is Spain’s
third largest city, beautifully situated on the eastern Mediterranean
coast, with many cultural and recreational attractions. The meeting
space will be in the Valencia Conference Center and the neighboring
Sorollo and Hilton Hotels. David Townsend will be the General Chair.
Following several site visits and much discussion, the Oversight
Subcommittee has voted to hold the 2012 meeting at the Disney Hotel
in Anaheim, California. Although adjacent to Disneyland, the Disney
atmosphere there is subdued, and it was felt to have marginal advantages
over returning to San Diego, the most competitive alternative. Tom
Lewellen has volunteered to be General Chair of this meeting.
At the meeting of the Oversight Subcommittee in Dresden, we received
three formal proposals for the site of the 2013 meeting: one for
Beijing, China, one for Seoul, Korea, and one for Cairns, Australia.
A proposal for Japan is also expected. The site selection process
has barely begun, but this growing interest from our Asia-Pacific
community in hosting the meeting is a strong motivating factor for
holding the 2013 NSS/MIC in that region.
You can find more information on the NMIS Technical Committee and
Council, including current Council membership, information on NMISTC-sponsored
awards, and a copy of our constitution and bylaws, at our web site:
http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/nps/nmisc/
.
Charles Watson can be reached at Siemens Molecular Imaging,
810 Innovation Drive, Knoxville, TN, 37932-2562 USA; Phone: +1 865-218-2419;
Fax: +1 865-218-3000; E-mail: charles.c.watson@siemens.com.
|
