JUNE 2003

Societies compete for molecular imagers' attention

Different histories and approaches all lead to multidisciplinary results

By: Deborah R. Dakins

Molecular imaging is by definition multidisciplinary, relying on the complementary skills of radiologists, biologists, chemists, and physicists. So it's no surprise that the primary organizations serving the molecular imaging community consider integration across medical specialties a key ingredient for advancing the field.

Both the Academy of Molecular Imaging (AMI) and the Society for Molecular Imaging (SMI) boast diverse memberships and similar goals: merging imaging modalities with basic science, increasing education and training in MI, pursuing increased funding for research, and tracking regulatory and reimbursement developments.

Both groups also sponsor annual meetings and publish their own peer-reviewed journals. In fact, relatively few differences beyond size, history, and organizational structure exist between the two societies.

The AMI (www.ami-imaging.org) grew out of the Institute for Clinical PET. The 12-year-old ICP remains one of the four councils that make up the AMI, which totals about 2000 members. Each AMI institute began as a preexisting society that continues to operate independently under the general direction of an oversight board of directors. Each has a slightly different take on molecular imaging. The ICP continues as an educational organization focused on molecular imaging modalities. The Institute for Molecular Technologies is a meeting ground for vendors. Molecular therapeutics is the focus of the Society of Non-Invasive Imaging in Drug Development. Fusing basic science research and instrumentation development is the goal of the Institute for Molecular Imaging (IMI).

Molecular imaging demands this kind of broad representation, said Michael Phelps, Ph.D., AMI president and founder of the ICP.

"If you look at molecular imaging or biotechnology, one thing they have in common is an effort to bring physical, biological, and medical sciences together," he said. "But each has its own culture, with its own language and terminology, and it's hard to work across those lines. We wanted to create a structure where these cultures could coexist."

The Society for Molecular Imaging (www.molecularimaging.org) is a scientific and educational organization whose mission is to advance understanding of biology and medicine through noninvasive in vivo investigation of cellular and molecular events involved in normal and pathologic processes.

The SMI has about 500 members and, like the AMI, espouses a multidisciplinary approach to the field. Case in point: Christopher Contag, SMI president, is a Ph.D. virologist specializing in microbiology and immunology at Stanford University.

"Our membership is broad," he said. "There are chemists, biologists, clinicians, radiologists, and physicists. The SMI is essentially a group of people who decided that in vivo assays were important and that those assays were necessary to integrate into biological and medical studies. We provide a forum where interface and advances can occur."

Unlike the AMI, which expanded outward from the world of PET, the SMI was created without any predisposition toward a particular modality or approach. The goal was not to redirect an existing group but to create an entirely new society that is broad in both modalities and science, Contag said.

Not to be overlooked is the Society of Nuclear Medicine (www.snm.org), which added "advancing molecular imaging," as its tagline in June 2002. The 14,000-member SNM includes physicians, scientists, and technologists.

"We are the major organization in molecular imaging, providing a forum for the latest laboratory and clinical research in the field through the scientific program at our annual meeting and through our journal, the JNM," said Dr. Michael Gelfand, SNM president.

Because of the size of the organization, the SNM offers what amounts to "one-stop shopping in molecular imaging," he said.

It's not unusual for several societies to coexist during the early days of any discipline, while the field sorts itself out, said Dr. Sam Gambhir, director of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Gambhir serves as both a founding member of the SMI and a member of the AMI's board of directors. He chairs the AMI's Institute for Molecular Imaging, whose mission is closely aligned with that of the SMI.

"The roles of the IMI and the SMI are predominantly as sounding boards for all the basic scientists in the field," he said. "We tried merging the AMI and the SMI, but that effort has not been successful."

One of the challenges to a merger is the existence of two competing journals, he said, and indecision about which would be relinquished should the SMI and AMI join forces.

"My view is that the two should merge," Gambhir said. "At this stage, a fair amount of crossover membership exists, and I think most members would like to be part of one consolidated organization. But I don't see that happening any time soon."

Contag and Phelps agree that in these early days, both AMI and SMI can play complementary roles within the MI community. Just like molecular imaging's beginnings, achieving long-term research, training, education, and related goals will require a collaborative effort.

"What is amazing about molecular imaging is that it emerged at about the same time-in the early 1990s-from several different disciplines," Contag said. "Developmental biologists, radiologists, virologists, and nuclear medicine folks all at the same time said, 'It's time to do these assays in vivo.' The initial publications in molecular imaging all appeared within a few years of each other. That shows how the environment was ripe for developing these tools."