The BIR Annual Congress took place on 22 and 23 October 2014 at The Royal College of General Practitioners. It was attended by over 200 radiologists, radiographers, physicians, oncologists and medical physicists from across the world and speakers from theUK, Europe,Brazil,India and the USA.
There were two parallel sessions, optimising the ability for delegates to pick and choose seminars from a range of topics including infectious diseases, cardiovascular imaging, pulmonary diseases, MSK, neuroimaging and GI radiology. Reflecting back on the history of radiology specialities was a recurring theme throughout the two days alongside in-depth analysis of current and future developments in clinical practice.
Delegates were treated to an enthralling and amusing talk by Professor Adrian Dixon (University of Cambridge), who reflected on the progress made with abdominal imaging during his career.
This was emphasised in a fascinating summary of the history of radiology by Dr Adrian Thomas (chair, International Society for the History of Radiology).
Highlights included Professor Bertie Squire (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) with a fascinating and informative overview of the history of tuberculosis and Dr Sujal Desai (King’s College,London) speaking on aspergillus in the lungs. There was a day devoted to cardiovascular imaging including an absorbing talk on management of pulmonary embolic diseases by Professor Duncan Ettles (Hull Royal Infirmary).
There was fantastic feedback for some superb talks from experts in their field: Lung nodules on screening by Dr John Holemans (Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital), causes of insufficiency fractures by Dr Kassim Javaid (University of Oxford). And the neuroradiology stream was impressed with Professor Pia Sundgren (Lund University,Sweden) speaking on brain tumours and Professor Alison Murray (University of Aberdeen) speaking on neurodegeneration and dementia.
A new innovation for this conference was electronic posters, which gave 75 researchers the opportunity to display their work digitally and gave delegates the opportunity to have one-to-one interaction with presenters in the eposter sessions.
Dr David Wilson, President of the BIR said, “We are indebted to Congress Director, Dr Klaus Irion, for his vision in bringing together such a varied and international programme which was invaluable to both newly qualified and experienced professionals.”
A number of awards were presented at the event, including the Sir Godfrey Hounsfield Memorial Award which was presented to Professor Ignac Fogelman, following his lecture on “The Isotope Bone Scan, past, present and future”.
As one delegate put it, “Fantastic presentations, international speakers, speakers from different backgrounds help give different perspectives, and the variety of subjects covered made it a great event.”
