Watch this session on ECR Live: Thursday, 16:00–17:30, Room E2
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Malignant primary bone tumours like osteosarcoma and Ewing’s sarcoma are very serious diseases mainly affecting children and teenagers. General radiologists are not likely to see these patients every day at their practice, but when they do, they must know what they have to do to optimise patient care and improve outcomes. Experts will give instructions and share useful advice during the dedicated Multidisciplinary Session today at the ECR.

Conventional x-ray of a tumour in the knee
(Image provided by Prof. Koenraad Verstraete)

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Watch this session on ECR Live: Thursday, March 6, 16:00–17:30, Room I/K
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The demand for PET/CT studies is increasing and so is the need for radiologists to improve their knowledge of this important modality. One of the many areas that require their attention is the occurrence of pitfalls related to the uptake of Fludeoxyglucose (18F), commonly called FDG, the most commonly used tracer in PET/CT imaging. A dedicated Special Focus session at the ECR will offer attendees useful clues on how to avoid these pitfalls and correctly interpret images.

Katrine Åhlström Riklund is director of the medical school and deputy head of the department of radiation sciences at Umeå University, Sweden. She is 2nd vice-chairperson of the ESR’s Congress Committee.

FDG uptake by tissue is also a marker for glucose uptake, which is closely correlated with certain types of tissue metabolism. This means that FDG can show not only disease-related changes but also normal, healthy metabolic changes in the body. “Not everything that shines is pathological. To know the difference, you have to train and learn what is really a disease and what is the physiological distribution of this tracer,” said Professor Katrine Åhlström Riklund, a radiologist specialised in nuclear medicine at Umeå, Sweden, who will moderate the session.
To help radiologists, speakers will share advice regarding FDG uptake in oncology, neurology and cardiology.

Most FDG PET/CT studies are currently being carried out to help stage cancer, and plan and follow-up therapy. The combination of FDG and PET/CT imaging is particularly useful in several different malignancies. Because a tumour cell divides rapidly and has a high rate of metabolism, FDG uptake usually corresponds to disease. Once physicians know the extent of the disease, they can make a more accurate diagnosis and treatment plan, especially in targeted therapies.

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The 25hours Hotel, close to the MuseumsQuartier in central Vienna, is a hotel with an uninhibited but relaxing atmosphere, which plays on the dreams and sensations of the circus world and elements of the big top.

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In the build up to ECR 2014, we will be showcasing a few of the optical illusions cases which will be presented in the interlude of ECR 2014’s new Case-based Diagnosis Training session. Our first case, below, was submitted by Dutch neuroradiologist, Dr. A. A. Jacobi-Postma. The picture shows a patient with a non-functioning macro-adenoma, but it looks a little like something else.

What do you see? Leave your illusion interpretation as a comment.

Stop by the session at the congress on Monday, March 10, or come back to the blog in a few days to see if your interpretation matches Dr. Jacobi-Postma’s.

The graph below shows the ages of speakers at ECR 2013. While the most common age of scientific paper presenters was 30, the most common age among educational speakers was 50.

Your ECR future is bright: today’s presenters, tomorrow’s teachers …

The ECR represents a unique mixture of tradition, innovation and entertainment. Every year the Congress Committee and the ESR Office try to introduce some innovations to attendees. Some of these innovations are quite big and remarkable, others could be quite small and almost invisible. For example, let’s look back and recall the history of the Electronic Poster Online System (EPOS) at the ECR. In 2003, when EPOS was born and launched for the first time, there were some sceptics saying that it was a step back compared to sessions with traditional paper posters. But EPOS turned out to be extremely successful. Today we cannot imagine the ECR without EPOS. And after more than 10 years of EPOS, we consider it a unique online scientific and educational database. Seeing this success, other medical congresses have started to follow the new standard of poster presentations established by the ECR.

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Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,

It is now just a few weeks until ECR 2014. As congress president, I am very much looking forward to welcoming you to this meeting, which will take place on March 6-10 in Vienna, Austria. Every ECR that I have attended has been a unique and unforgettable event and I am absolutely sure that ECR 2014 is going to continue this brilliant chain of outstanding meetings. I am also very proud that ECR 2014 is a jubilee meeting – it is the 20th congress in the modern history of the event, counting from the pivotal year of 1991 when it was completely re-designed and held for the first time in Vienna.

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At each ECR since 2008, the ‘ESR meets’ programme has included a partner discipline along with the three guest countries, as a way to build formal bridges between the European Society of Radiology (ESR) and other branches of medicine, and to give congress participants an opportunity to learn about something a little different. At ECR 2014 the programme includes a visit from undoubtedly the largest medical discipline to take part in the initiative so far: cardiology, represented by one of the biggest medical societies in Europe, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Cardiology has much in common with radiology, but this is the first time that the two European societies have come together for an official joint session at a major meeting.

Despite some well-known points of controversy between the two disciplines, concerning professional ‘turf’, the overriding message during this afternoon’s ‘ESR meets ESC’ session will be one of cooperation and mutual understanding. Prof. Panos Vardas, president of the European Society of Cardiology, who will co-preside at the session, believes that the blurring of borders between subspecialties makes this kind of exchange of knowledge a must.

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This year the European Society of Radiology (ESR) will again invite three national radiological societies and a partner discipline to take part in the popular ‘ESR meets’ programme during its annual meeting, the European Congress of Radiology (ECR). Delegations from Russia, home country of ECR 2014 President, Professor Valentin Sinitsyn, Mexico and Serbia will present their latest achievements in imaging. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will focus on the cooperation between cardiologists and radiologists in the field of cardiac imaging. The European Federation of Radiographers Societies (EFRS) will also take part in joint sessions with Russian radiographers, to stress the role of this important partner discipline.

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ECR Today spoke with the next ECR president, Prof. Valentin Sinitsyn. He is chief of the radiology department at the Federal Centre of Medicine and Rehabilitation in Moscow, Russia, and currently serves as president of the European Society of Cardiac Radiology (ESCR).

ECRT: What will be the main highlights of ECR 2014’s scientific programme?

Valentin Sinitsyn: Prepare for more interactivity. People are increasingly interested in interactive sessions to assess what they have learned from a lecture. The ECR has been developing interactive sessions for several years now, but we want to increase that. Today, you can find a lot of information on the internet and many people might not think it is necessary to travel to a congress. We want to create something attractive and show that it is worth coming here. Nothing can replace shaking hands with your colleagues from other countries. I would be very sad if the ECR were entirely online. This is why we are making live meetings more interactive.

ECR 2014 Congress President Valentin Sinitsyn, from Moscow, Russia.

We would also like to change the format of scientific sessions. Our lectures have the same format they had one or two hundred years ago: a stage and an auditorium. We are currently discussing the concept of a multimedia classroom, a model which was successfully introduced during the last SIRM congress in June 2012. This multimedia classroom offered 60 work stations from different companies with 25 different cases which were discussed at the end. We are currently discussing the structure with Professor E. Neri from Pisa, who was responsible for the scientific programme of that project.

Soon we are going to use smart phones for voting during audience response sessions. But wireless technology has its limits and sometimes networks crash, so it needs a lot of work. Keypads are an old technology but they are very reliable. I am sure that next year, or the year after that, everybody will be able to vote with their own iPads or tablets.

We will also increase the number of multidisciplinary sessions. This is not something we have to do just during the ECR. This year we had the Imaging Biomarker’s Course the day before the congress, which was organised by the European School of Radiology. This will take place again next year with radiation oncology as the topic.

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