Canon Medical Systems returned to Barcelona Football Club for its MRI users meeting. The agenda, which covered two days, concentrated on men and women’s health.
With a full and exciting agenda, the two-day meeting was enthusiastically received by participants, with delegates commenting positively on a very informative, well organised and enjoyable meeting that provided an opportunity, in addition to the formal lectures, to meet and network with other users.
The first session covered men’s health, concentrating on prostate cancer. The opening presentation by Dr. Jurgan Futterer from Nijmegen, the Netherlands covered the anatomy of the prostate, detailing where the cancer was most likely to be situated, size of the zones, how the cancer is scored using the Gleason score and the importance of the tumour extent and tumour volume. This was followed by session on the technical aspects of prostate cancer imaging, highlighting the use of multi-parametric studies. Gleason scoring for Radiologists was then covered, together, followed by explanation of the post-processing tool PIRAD 1 and 2. The morning closed with a presentation on ‘Pitfalls and non-visible tumours’.
The afternoon opened with a session entitled ‘A plea for MR-targeted biopsies, followed by ‘Staging of prostate cancer’ and ‘MR-guided focal therapy’. The day ended with practical demonstrations, including a real-time ultrasound with MRI fusion demo, using a 3D MRI data whist performing live ultrasound. The data registration and set-up took only approximately three minutes, which reduces the exam time whilst giving good pathological information. After the meeting had closed, delegates were given a demonstration and overview of Olea Medical’s software and the opportunity to use the Olea workstations in the congress hall to post-process a number of prostate patient cases.
Day Two covered women’s health: breast imaging, opening with an overview of technical requirements for breast imaging. This was followed by Dr. Pau Palana from Barcelona who presented on Beast MRI, indications and level of evidence, focussing on the screening of high-risk women’. This was followed by a lecture on’ MRI examination of the high risk dense breast’, which concluded that MRI allows an early detection of breast cancer. Advanced MRI techniques were then discussed, including fMRI, contrast and fast MRI screening. Olea Medical also presented its breast post-processing platform. The day closed with a look at future developments in breast MRI. Throughout the two days, the presentations were interspersed with discussions and questions and answer sessions.
Feedback included “Thank you to everyone for a brilliant couple of days. It was great meeting lovely, like-minded people! Hopefully we will all meet up again at some point,” and“It was indeed a great time, with lots of helpful information which will be put into practice.” Another delegate, commenting of the networking opportunities said, “Many thanks to Canon Medical Systems for the user meeting. We were really spoilt and felt like VIPS. It was great meeting you all – likewise radiography is a small world and hopefully we will meet up again sometime.”
Delegates also enjoyed a tour around Barcelona Football Club followed by a tapas dinner in the restaurant at the club.
Photograph caption: Two of the UK participants won the quiz and received FCB shirts as a prize. Shown on the left Kumaar Thiagarajan, Senior MRI Radiographer at Lewisham & Green NHS Trust and on the right Shyam Bheemreddy, Senior Radiographer at Vista Diagnostics InHealth, Waterloo, London