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Round Table Meetings and Colloquia

spaceholder 960-dplRegistration for Special Topic Meetings is open to all inter­ested per­sons.

spaceholder 960-dplParticipation in the Round Table Colloquia is by in­vi­ta­tion only. This general set-up facilitates open and critical discussions. Expenses (travel, lodging, and meals) will not be covered by the Foundation. Commonly no pro­ceed­ings are published; however, the acting Chair­man can decide otherwise.


Round Table Colloquium

Hippocrates

Ethics in Medicine
'Factory' Produced Papers and their Publishers: An Outrageous Waste of Public Funds
Sophia Antipolis, France; 1-2 March 2024
The 13th Meeting in the Series

myriad of 'scientific' papers whose contents are truly in­essen­tial and point­less were and still are written and published every year.

Hardly anybody is interested in decreasing the quantity and in­creas­ing the overall quality of such papers. The problem is not particularly new, has been dis­cuss­ed often, the culprits are known and publicly exposed, and everybody is against it — in theory. However, the financial and university career incentives are too high for everybody involved. 'Scientists' performance is measured by weight and not by outcome.

In scientific circles the reputation of established publishers has suffered dra­ma­ti­cal­ly; they are considered untrustworthy and irresponsible, not only by the editors, collaborators and reviewers, but also by authors. Even authors who have published in the past are involved: their articles were published in journals that have been downgraded from a top scientific level to a low-level internet domain.

spaceholder 960-dplBy invitation only.

spaceholder 960-dplContact the TRTF office for further information.


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Round Table Colloquium

Hippocrates

Ethics in Medicine
Health Care versus Medicine —
Commercializing Medical Imaging
Sophia Antipolis, France; 27-28 May 2023
The 12th Meeting in the Series

he organization and logistics of medical imaging are changing rapidly in some countries. Independent small private practices disappear, Germany and Switzerland being good examples. The legal introduction of medical care centers (MVZs) in Germany some fifteen years ago has redefined the framework of radiological care. To many patients the radiologists’ offices might look the same, a thriving medical business, but what was formerly owned by one, perhaps two radiologists who had set themselves up, today is part of one of the specialist chains with branch offices in the region or all over the country and beyond.

Medical and increasingly non-medical investors and private equity enterprises have moved into the formerly protected health care market and started taking over doctors’ offices in a number of disciplines: radiology, orthopedics, ophthalmology, neurology, rheumatology, dialysis, dentistry, and even physiotherapy.

Medicine and healthcare are often used as synonyms, equivalent terms for the same activity. However, there is a clear difference between healthcare and medicine: Medicine is performed by physicians, whereas healthcare is the commercialization of medicine, performed by businessmen and bureaucrats. It is a question of semantics if one wants to understand the motives and considerations of the people involved. Medicine has always focused on a patient, an individual. Healthcare is group-oriented for-profit administration and management.

Physicians and dentists warn against outpatient care centers owned by holding companies that often have an unclear financial background. They claim that this commoditization would lead to increased overuse and misuse of care for patients and increase the economic pressure on young doctors and, at the same time, lead to neglect of rural areas and patients with special needs. Quality, integrity and security of medical care suffer.

What can be done?

spaceholder 960-dplAn accompanying column "New realities in medical imaging" was pub­lished earlier on Rinckside.

spaceholder 960-dplBy invitation only.

spaceholder 960-dplContact the TRTF office for further information.


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Round Table Colloquium

Hippocrates

Ethics in Medicine
The Disaster of Scientific Papers —
Publish to Perish
Sophia Antipolis, France; 29-30 July 2022
The 11th Meeting in the Series

he colloquium's focus was on the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of scientific papers. The publishing houses count among the main culprits of the decay and decline of scientific publications. Sloppy science is dumped by an ever increasing number of journals and websites, while journalists, politicians, and the general public are, sometimes inadvertently, relying on fraudulent and flawed research to guide major science and health-political decisions, and even veteran researchers have a hard time to ascertain which publications were indisputable.

Apparently little can be done because universities and similar in­sti­tu­tions are not interested in fighting the problem as long as they received public funding to support publications of mass publications.

spaceholder 960-dplContact the TRTF office for further information.


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Special Topic Meeting

Meeting Freiburg

Magnetic Resonance Imaging — Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow
Freiburg, Germany; postponed to 1-2 July 2022

ome inter­natio­nally leading scien­tists in the field presented the deve­lopment of MRI over the last decades and gave their very personal view of where we are coming from and where we are heading. The presentations not only covered key areas of research but also took a look behind science, how science is made and how it is changing.

Presentations by young researchers about their development and career choices in academia as well as in industry complemented the lectures.

This two-day meeting was organized and chaired by Jürgen Hennig, Freiburg, Germany.

spaceholder 960-dplAn accompanying column "Magnetic Resonance Imaging • The 50th anniversary" was pub­lished on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.

spaceholder 960-dplJürgen Hennig (chair)
spaceholder 960-dplMartin Büchert
spaceholder 960-dplDominik von Elverfeldt
spaceholder 960-dplUte Ludwig
spaceholder 960-dplMaxim Zaitsev



Sponsored by EMRF and TRTF:

EMRF-TRTF logos


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Round Table Colloquium

Hippocrates

Ethics in Medicine
Real and Artificial Intelligence in Bio-Medicine
Sophia Antipolis, France; 11-12 March 2022
The 10th Meeting in the Series • A Virtual Round Table

he symposium's focus was on the dif­feren­tia­tion of human intel­lect and com­puter-based brain-power re­place­ment in bio-medical appli­ca­tions, first and foremost in the eval­u­ation of medi­cal imaging data and in image process­ing.

spaceholder 960-dplTwo accompanying columns "Looking into the fu­ture with blin­kers on" and "Are radiologists’ neurons faster and cheaper?" were pub­lished on Rinckside.

spaceholder 960-dplContact the TRTF office for further information.


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Round Table Colloquium

Lauterbur_lablog

As time goes by:
The 50th Anniversary of MR Imaging
Sophia Antipolis, France; 3-4 September 2021

n medical imaging, the times of plain x-rays ended in September 1971 when the world's first axial x-ray com­puter as­sist­ed tomo­graph (CT or CAT) was in­stall­ed in Eng­land.

In the same month, on 2 September 1971, Paul C. Lauterbur, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, recorded in his laboratory notebook the idea of ap­ply­ing mag­ne­tic field gradients in all three di­men­sions to create nuc­lear magne­tic re­so­nan­ce (NMR) images — and had his in­ven­tion cer­ti­fied; yet, he was never able to patent it because the uni­ver­sity op­pos­ed it ("The technique has no future").

All NMR experiments before Lauterbur's invention of 1971 had been one-dimensional and lacked spatial information. Nobody could determine exactly where the NMR signal originated within the sample.

Lauterbur_MR_machine

Lauterbur's idea changed this. He called his imaging method zeugmatography, combining the Greek words "zeugma" (ζεγμα = the bridge or the yoke that holds two animals together in front of a carriage) and "graphein" (γράφειν= to write, to depict) to describe the joining of chemical and spatial information. This term was later replaced by (N)MR imaging.

This made it possible to create three- and two-dimensional images and metabolic representations of structures of the human body that could not be visualized with other methods. MR imaging replaced previously used invasive examinations and thereby reduced the suffering for many patients. Lauterbur received the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his discovery to create a two-dimensional picture by introducing gradients in the magnetic field.

The symposium will be an exchange of fond — and perhaps some not so pleasant — memories of the first years and the early decades putting into practice a challenging idea. The scientific and research excitement is long gone, so this meeting will be a remembrance of days past.

spaceholder 960-dplBy invitation only.

This two-day meeting is being organized and chaired by Robert N. Muller, Mons, Belgium, and Peter A. Rinck, Sophia-Antipolis, France.

spaceholder 960-dplFurther reading: "An Excursion into the History of Magnetic Resonance Imaging" — for a free (per­so­nal) off­print of the hi­story of MR imag­ing click here to download.

spaceholder 960-dplAn accompanying column "Magnetic Resonance Imaging • The 50th anniversary" was pub­lished on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.

spaceholder 960-dplContact the TRTF office for additional information.


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Special Topic Meeting

Magnetic Resonance Imaging — Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow
Freiburg, Germany; postponed to 1-2 July 2022


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Special Topic Meeting

Book of Abstracts

Standing at the Crossroads: 40 Years of MR Contrast Agents
Contrast-Enhanced Biomedical Imaging
Mons, Belgium; 9-10 May 2019
The 16th Meeting in the Series

he thirty anniversary conference on MR contrast agents was de­vot­ed to new de­ve­lop­ments in mag­ne­tic re­so­nan­ce con­trast agents – and a re­view of the past 40 years. The two-day meeting turned into an exceptional platform to present and follow-up developments and results in the field since the introduction of such agents.

The conference was organized alternating review lectures of the developments, improvements, challenges, and fail­ures of the last thirty years given by leading experts in the field and presentations of novel theoretical tools, new ideas, and new compounds by young scientists.

spaceholder 960-dplThe Book of Abstracts of the conference can be down­loaded here.

spaceholder 960-dplThe Opening Lecture "MR imaging: Quo vadis" was pub­lished on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.

spaceholder 960-dplA Review of the Conference can also be found on Rinck­side and Aunt Minnie Europe.


Book of Abstracts     Group picture 2019


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Round Table Colloquium

Hippocrates

Ethics in Medicine
The De­per­sona­li­zation of Medical Imaging
Sophia Antipolis, France; 11-12 July 2019
The 9th Meeting in the Series

he symposium's focus was on human beings' right to empathic and personal treatment by physicians, also in the ancillary medical disciplines.

spaceholder 960-dplBy invitation only.

spaceholder 960-dplA summary of the meeting was published in Rinckside as part of the discussion of the Covid crisis.

spaceholder 960-dplContact the TRTF office for further information.


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