Messages from the ISMRM & SMRT AMPC Chairs
Douglas C. Noll, Ph.D.
2020 ISMRM Annual Meeting Program Chair
As program chair of the ISMRM Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC), it is an honor and great pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 ISMRM & SMRT Virtual Conference & Exhibition. While our route to this meeting took some unexpected turns, the meeting is jam-packed with the features that our members have come to expect and which make the annual ISMRM and SMRT meetings fantastic: including cutting-edge clinical and technical educational courses, stimulating named lectures and plenary sessions, and scientific sessions that will have, as always, the very best of magnetic resonance in medicine research.
The conversion to a virtual meeting necessitated some changes to limit “live” content to a few hours each day, both for time zone reasons and to accommodate those who may not be able to dedicate more time when working from home. The main meeting maintains the familiar one-week structure with plenary sessions, awards ceremonies, and named lectures throughout the week. However, new this year for the virtual conference, all scientific and educational content will be available for asynchronous viewing starting on 24 July 2020 with dedicated spaces for comments, questions, and answers. For the week of the actual meeting, we will have live sessions to allow attendees to “Meet the Teachers” for educational sessions and interact with presenters in “Live Q&A” for oral scientific sessions. On Friday, we are also introducing Highlights Sessions, where you can hear a recap of some of the most exciting science, as well as a special session on COVID-19. Recordings of these sessions will also be available for viewing promptly afterward for those who are not able to be present during the live portions. Lastly, there will be a new poster browsing area that will allow attendees to peruse posters at their leisure.
Our named lectures will be delivered by three of our most distinguished members. The Lauterbur Lecture will be delivered on Sunday by Dr. Peter Basser, who will give his perspective on the technology and role of diffusion MRI in his talk “Diffusion MRI: Looking Backward, Looking Forward.” On Tuesday, Dr. David Brunner will present his cutting-edge work in the NIBIB New Horizons Lecture entitled “MR Platforms for an Information Age.” Finally, the Mansfield Lecture will be delivered on Thursday by Dr. P. Ellen Grant, who will share her wealth of knowledge on “Imaging the First 1000 Days of Life: Challenges and Opportunities.” In addition, ISMRM President Lawrence Wald has selected Eric Betzig, Ph.D., to present this year’s Presidential Lecture on Wednesday. Dr. Betzig was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”
The AMPC has put together a great set of plenary and educational sessions. The plenary sessions, as usual, will happen during the week of the Virtual Meeting with a wide variety of timely topics: “MR-Guided Radiation Therapy (MRgRT): See What You Treat,” “Translating to Translate: Fostering Collaborations Between Basic & Clinician Scientists,” “Bringing MRI to Low-Resource Areas,” and “MRI in Patients with Implantable Electronic Devices.”
The outstanding selection of educational courses for the 2020 Virtual Meeting is the culmination of 18 months of planning by the AMPC overseen by Vice-Chair Nicole Seiberlich. Together, they have organized over 94 educational sessions with over 367 lectures (180+ hours!) on topics ranging from basic principles of MRI physics, to hands-on machine learning, to advanced clinical applications of MRI. Nicole started several new initiatives, including setting up small task forces to organize courses around some neglected topics, specifically Pre-Clinical Imaging and Value of MRI. The breadth and depth of the Educational program are unparalleled and provide the best in MR education anywhere in the world. CME credits will be available for a subset of educational courses, and self-assessment modules will again be available for our American M.D. members who need them for board certification purposes.
This meeting will also have a virtual Exhibition Hall where attendees can meet (virtually, of course) with our corporate partners, vendors, and other exhibitors. This meeting will also have a number of special programs, Young Investigator presentations, and Member-Initiated Symposia, which have been designed and presented by you, the membership. Secret Sessions are also back, organized by and aimed towards early-career investigators in the society, though anyone is welcome to attend. You won’t find details in the program (it’s a secret – well, sort of…), so ask your friends or check social media for where to find them.
One can’t imagine this meeting coming together without the flexibility and responsiveness of the AMPC, the ISMRM office, the moderators, the presenters, and of course, the attendees! On behalf of the AMPC and ISMRM, I welcome you our Virtual Conference and Exhibition. Enjoy the meeting!
Claire B. Mulcahy, M.MRT., B.Appl.Sc.
2020 SMRT Annual Meeting Program Chair
As Chair of the SMRT Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC), it is my great honor to welcome you to the ISMRM & SMRT Virtual Conference & Exhibition.
Current world events mean that this year’s meeting will be delivered for the first time as a fully virtual conference and exhibition. Whilst addressing this challenge, I am proud to announce that one of our priorities has been to use this as an opportunity to improve access to the world’s premier educational and scientific MRI meeting for our global membership. We have transformed our in-person meeting into a virtual event that showcases through on-demand meeting materials and ‘Live Q&A’ events both the depth and expertise of our membership. We have transitioned our four-day SMRT meeting into a seven-day, around-the-clock multilingual event in alliance with the ISMRM meeting and provided amazing value with an ISMRM & SMRT program that now includes >5000 presentations, >120 live Q&A sessions, 50 CME credits, and 25 hours of target courses for CE credits. Additionally, for the benefit of our global membership, we have delivered the program in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
This year’s SMRT program ‘celebrates the translation of scientific and technical advances into clinical practice,’ the aim being to highlight and communicate recent MR advances for improving MR services and patient care. In addition, and for the first time, this year all meeting registrations have full access to both ISMRM and SMRT meeting content—providing you with a rare opportunity to learn from, and network with, the very best in our industry. All scientific and educational content can be accessed now so that you can review content and comment and/or leave questions for the authors. During the live portion of the conference (8-14 August), each of the SMRT-focused educational forums will feature interactive question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions and/or panel discussions with the expert speakers and moderators.
On 8 August, 2019-2020 SMRT President Shawna Farquharson will officially open the meeting with welcoming remarks prior to the broadcast of the plenary and keynote presentations. Throughout the week, multiple live SMRT Q&A sessions on topics such as MR Safety, Neuro, MSK, Body, Cardiac, Contrast, Advanced Imaging Techniques, and Management, will be hosted and should not be missed. Special highlights of the meeting include the plenary presentation from Professor Pek Lan Khong, “The Importance of Bridging the Gap between Scientific Advance & Clinical Translation”; an exciting keynote talk from Professor Mark Griswold, “Holographic Visualization of Human Anatomy”; and the SMRT President’s Lecture by Professor P. Ellen Grant on “Fetal and Neonatal Imaging: Importance, Lessons Learned, Needs.” All speakers are renowned world leaders in their field, and we are fortunate to have them present at our Annual Meeting.
Tuesday, 11 August, ushers in the new 2020-2021 SMRT President with the gavel being passed to Nancy Beluk during the SMRT Business Meeting and Awards live session. This session will include the presentation of awards for the 2020 SMRT President’s Award, JAK Award, Research and Clinical Abstract Award winners, and the presentations for the prestigious SMRT Achievement Awards to honor extraordinary contributions to the SMRT from our members. Congratulations to all 2020 award winners; it is a huge achievement to receive an international award for your work and career contributions!
Seizing the opportunity to expand our program this year, we have incorporated a number of new initiatives, including the SMRT MRI Masterclass and the SMRT International Clinical Sessions. The SMRT Masterclass feature a series of lectures focused on “The Essentials of MR Physics” provided by Dr. Martin Graves and associated live Q&A sessions. Dr. Graves is a world-renowned expert in MR physics education. These masterclasses are a fantastic opportunity to revise your MR physics knowledge and/or ask the questions you have always wanted answered. The SMRT International Clinical Sessions aim to provide clinically focused educational sessions relevant to different regions around the world. As a meeting first, they will be multi-lingual sessions hosted by ISMRM & SMRT members from China, Japan, Greece, Brazil, South America, Australia, New Zealand, North America, Great Britain, and Ireland.
I am also delighted to announce that, with the support of ISMRM, we will, for the first time, be delivering an SMRT Member-Initiated Symposium (MIS) at the ISMRM Annual Meeting with the live Q&A session on Friday, 14 August. The title of this year’s MIS is “The ‘Captain of the Ship’ in MRI: Does the Doctrine Apply?” We hope the live session will foster dialogue amongst MRI professionals from both ISMRM and SMRT—so be sure to show support for the SMRT and join the discussion!
Of course, this meeting could not happen without the support of our corporate partners, vendors, and other exhibitors. To complement hours of quality educational content at your fingertips, make sure you visit the virtual Exhibition Hall that will be open at times to cater to attendees in multiple time zones. Be sure to support the exhibitors and get a glimpse of what is state-of-the-art in our field.
Finally, I would like to thank the AMPC, the SMRT Policy Board, Executive Board, ISMRM AMPC Chair Doug Noll & Vice-Chair Nicole Sieberlich, presenters, moderators, and the ISMRM/SMRT Central Office for their generous contributions of knowledge, time, and spirit this past year. I feel privileged to be able to share this meeting with you, at last! Thank you for attending; we hope that you enjoy the program and our globally connected community at the 29th International SMRT Annual Meeting!