Upcoming ECR 2014 in Vienna ramps up radiogenomics
The European Congress of Radiology (ECR) in Vienna, the largest radiological conference throughout Europe, will be opening in less than two weeks from March 6-10 at the Austria Center Vienna, where it has now been held for 20 consecutive years.
The European Society of Radiology (ESR) is counting on 20,000 participants from around the world. A total of 101 countries are expected to be represented at the meeting. This year’s conference will feature a New Horizons Session covering the newest research and applications in radiogenomics, theranostics and personalized medicine.
“The explosion of ‘omics’ data is changing the face of medicine so considerably and rapidly that, if we don’t pay enough attention, our specialty could be threatened. Personalized medicine is not just a dream, but an actual reality, and we have to adapt our specialty to this new paradigm. The development of personalized imaging, which has already begun in oncology, should be taken further, and we have to appreciate its impact on education,” commented ESR President, Guy Frija, MD, also head of the imaging department at Georges-Pompidou European Hospital, Paris, in a release.
Other areas of special interest this year are new research and clinical insights in oncology, obesity as it relates to cardiac imaging, ischemic stroke and the Human Connectome, an international project dedicated to mapping connections in the brain. There also will be symposia dedicated to RECIST (Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors).
Among the scientific sessions will be research related to image-guided prostate cancer, MR elastography and a timely breast imaging “Foundation Course.”
Multidisciplinary sessions are on the rise at this year’s meeting, with particular interest in cancer patient management. Teams of radiologists, surgeons, oncologists and hematologists will be presenting their research in renal, bone and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.
Every year ESR chooses guest countries to be represented at the conference and this year Mexico, Russia and Serbia will be highlighted in the program. The European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS) will present "EFRS meets Russia" to discuss the changing landscape of radiology from country to country.
“This is not something we have to do just during the ECR,” said ECR 2014 President, Valentin Sinitsyn, MD, PhD, also chief of the radiology department at the Federal Center of Medicine and Rehabilitation in Moscow, in the release. “Last year for instance we had the Imaging Biomarker’s course, which was organized by the [ESR] one day before the congress. We will repeat this initiative in 2014, with radiation oncology as a topic."
Molecular Imaging will be on site at ECR 2014 to report this year’s newest molecular imaging research and technology.