Dear Friends of the ECR,

With the European Congress of Radiology 2015 now just around the corner, I hope you are looking forward to it as much as I am. As an attendee of every ECR over the last 25 years, I have seen the meeting evolve significantly. I have watched the crowds in the entrance hall and the audiences in the lecture rooms swell to a point where the ECR now regularly attracts more than 20,000 participants. I am confident that this year will be no exception, because the ECR’s deserved reputation is not only for high scientific quality but also for constant innovation in science, education, interactivity, and networking.

Many of you will already have received your congress badge in the post and will be patiently waiting for the moment you can proudly display it as you walk into the Austria Center Vienna. A lot of you have hopefully also made use of the Interactive Programme Planner to browse the sessions and posters on offer at ECR 2015 and to start planning your visit. If you’re not attending in person, you can still use it to start planning your online viewing, as most of the sessions will again be available on our streaming platform, ECR Live.

ECR 2015 Congress President, Prof. Bernd Hamm, from Berlin, Germany

An important development this year, which I hope will help to make that planning even easier, is the restructuring of the session formats. Most of the educational sessions at the ECR are now grouped under the heading of E³ – European Excellence in Education, and they are now arranged according to the different levels defined by the European Training Curriculum for Radiology. Here, I would like to introduce you to the five branches of the E³ programme, which reflect the different levels of education in radiology, as well as the different stages of an individual’s professional career:

Rising Stars
The Rising Stars programme is already well established at the ECR; it is a series of sessions prepared especially for residents, medical students, and radiographers in training. This year there are six basic sessions, four student sessions and four different hands-on workshops on ultrasound within the Rising Stars programme.
View the Rising Stars programme in the Interactive Programme Planner > here

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Sessions will look different at ECR 2015, to help participants make the most of the scientific and educational programme. ECR Today spoke with Professor Bernd Hamm from Berlin, Germany, who will preside over the congress next year, to find out what the biggest radiological meeting in Europe and the most modern one worldwide will look like in 2015.

ESR Office: What will be the main highlights of ECR 2015’s teaching programme?
Bernd Hamm: One of the major changes will be a restructuring of the session categories. Over the last few years, we kept adding new types of sessions, making it difficult for participants to find the sessions they are interested in and compile an efficient individual schedule. Apart from the Refresher Courses, which have become well established and accepted, we now offer most teaching courses under the heading of E³ – European Excellence in Education. These courses are now structured according to the different levels defined by the European Training Curriculum for Radiology. The E³ programme consists of the following five branches, which reflect the different levels of education in radiology, as well as the different stages of an individual’s professional career: Rising Stars, European Diploma Prep Sessions, The Beauty of Basic Knowledge, ECR Academies, and ECR Master Classes.

Prof. Bernd Hamm, professor of radiology and chairman of all three
merged departments of radiology at the Charité, Humboldt-
Universität zu Berlin and Freie Universität (Campus Mi e, Campus
Virchow-Klinikum, and Campus Benjamin Franklin).

The Rising Stars programme is directed at medical students with an interest in radiology, residents, and radiographers in training. The European Diploma Prep Sessions aim to provide preparatory sessions for future European Diploma in Radiology (EDiR) candidates. The content of the programme reflects level I and II of the European Training Curriculum. These courses are held in close cooperation with the European Board of Radiology (EBR). The Beauty of Basic Knowledge programme focuses on knowledge essential to the daily practice of radiology and is best suited to residents and board-certified radiologists. The ECR Academies consist of a series of sessions relevant to a particular area of radiology, and may be suited to general radiologists and radiologists with a subspecialisation. The content of ECR Academies mostly corresponds to level III of the European Training Curriculum. The ECR Master Classes are designed for participants and subspecialists seeking cutting-edge information in specific field of interest. During the ECR, one ECR Master Class is offered for each subspecialty in radiology (level III and beyond). This new structure of a major part of the teaching courses offered at the ECR results from intense exchange and excellent cooperation between the Congress Programme Planning Committee members.

ESR: What will the ECR Academies focus on?
BH: The ECR Academies in 2015 will focus on the new hot issues, such as hybrid imaging, image-guided interventions in oncology, and modern imaging of the GI tract. In addition, there will be sessions covering genitourinary radiology and our popular interactive teaching sessions focusing on different aspects of radiology.

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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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Our blog superstar, Prof. José Cáceres, is one of the most popular lecturers at the ECR. So popular that his Mini Course on chest radiography was fully booked way in advance of ECR 2012 and quite a few people were disappointed that they couldn’t get in. So we spoke to the man himself, to answer those people who asked for his lectures to be held in a larger room.

Welcome to the seventh and last installment of our series introducing our Rising Stars, who submitted the best student abstracts and have been invited to present their work at ECR 2012 in front of a real congress audience. Each speaker will be announced individually on the Rising Stars Facebook page, with a more detailed look, including their full abstracts, here on the ESR Blog. Our speakers Ilaria Merli, and Maria Bercea will close the presentation of this year’s speakers:

More on the ESR Rising Stars…

Welcome to the sixth installment of our series introducing our Rising Stars, who submitted the best student abstracts and have been invited to present their work at ECR 2012 in front of a real congress audience. Each speaker will be announced individually on the Rising Stars Facebook page, with a more detailed look, including their full abstracts, here on the ESR Blog. Our next three speakers are Adrien D. Rácz, Angela Arena and Tsvetelina Teneva:

More on the ESR Rising Stars…

Welcome to the fifth installment of our series introducing our Rising Stars, who submitted the best student abstracts and have been invited to present their work at ECR 2012 in front of a real congress audience. Each speaker will be announced individually on the Rising Stars Facebook page, with a more detailed look, including their full abstracts, here on the ESR Blog. Our next three speakers are Kázmér Kovács, Vladislavs Kopitkovs and Walaa M. Al.Sharif:

More on the ESR Rising Stars…

Here’s the fourth installment of our series introducing our Rising Stars, who submitted the best student abstracts and have been invited to present their work at ECR 2012 in front of a real congress audience. Each speaker will be announced individually on the Rising Stars Facebook page, with a more detailed look, including their full abstracts, here on the ESR Blog. Our next three speakers are Feruza Rozikhodjaeva, Nauris Zdanovskis and Urzula Poznaka:

More on the ESR Rising Stars…