EUROPE
Special Section: Building a better radiologist

After Milos Lucic graduated from Novi Sad High School in Serbia in 1987, his parents, both physicians, offered some advice on his university and career plans. Their words of wisdom, Lucic recalls, were "Study whatever you want-but avoid medicine."

His mother, a radiologist, and his father, an internal medicine specialist, were wary of the challenges of practicing medicine in Serbia. They envisioned a more creative career for their son, perhaps in music or writing.

But Lucic decided to become a physician, graduating from the University School of Medicine in Novi Sad in 1994. During his student years, he was active in organizing protests against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosovic.

"Due to the hard conditions in our country-the repression against anyone who thought differently from the government at that time-many of us developed additional leadership skills and have improved them over the years," he said.

After medical school, Lucic planned to specialize in internal medicine. He changed his mind when a friend asked him to visit the MRI department at the Serbian Institute of Oncology in Sremska Kamenica, Novi Sad.

"This was my first serious contact with MRI. And I fell in love with radiology from that moment. The first day I stayed for 18 hours," he said.

Later, he began to do research at the same center, exploring a variety of diagnostic imaging modalities.

"I was impressed by the possibilities for imaging techniques as diagnostic tools. It was like a detective job to find lesions by using different pulse sequences," he said.

Lucic went on to discover a useful sequence for the diagnostic evaluation of cerebrospinal fluid, which he reported at the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology meeting in 1998 and other medical congresses. It earned him an award from the Institute of Oncology for innovative scientific achievement.

Now 34, and with about 84 scientific papers behind him, Lucic is deputy head of diagnostic imaging at the Institute of Oncology. He became chair of the EAR's Junior Radiologists' Forum last year. The JRF is seeking to revamp an exchange between Western and Eastern radiologists. The program has involved only a handful of radiologists, and Western radiologists have had to use older equipment on Eastern site visits.

"If you're accustomed to working with new equipment such as MRI systems with new pulse sequences, it's difficult to remember protocols you were dealing with five years ago," he said.

The JRF has asked the EAR management for approval to change the program. Personal visits would be replaced by large two-day workshops in various East European countries at a cost affordable to radiologists in the region.

Content would include new techniques in ultrasound, CT, and advanced MRI, but effort would be made to provide information about PACS and teleradiology in East European areas where it is harder to come by. If approved, the new program could begin within two years.

Lucic remains active in national government, serving as a member of the Parliament of the Republic of Serbia and the Parliamentary Board for Health. The one youthful activity to have fallen by the wayside is music.

"My music now is the sound of the MR," he said.