Stanford’s MDCT symposium focuses on cutting-edge research and clinical care

Clinical trials, practice issues, and innovation in CT will be explored at this year's Multidetector-Row CT (MDCT) Symposium, held June 14 to 17 in San Francisco.

The gathering hosted by Stanford University has steadily grown over the last eight years, forcing organizers to find new accommodations this year at the third largest hotel in San Francisco. The Hyatt Regency will easily accommodate the anticipated 1000 registrants, but it too may eventually prove too small.

Dr Geoffrey Rubin, chief of cardiovascular imaging at Stanford, cited several reasons for the meeting's popularity. The short duration of each lecture allows a greater diversity of topics. This year will see 167 lectures by more than 65 speakers (compared with 21 lectures by 18 speakers at the first symposium in 1999). Rubin directed each speaker to develop a very precise and focused message and then spent time fashioning precise and focused titles ("Imaging for PE in pregnancy").

Presentations include lectures on CT angiography technique, radiation exposure, workflow processing, imaging of pulmonary embolism, lung CAD, CT regulation, and operational challenges in moving from single to all-64-detector CT.

"The idea for the course is to present everything there is to cover on MDCT," Rubin said. "We have a unique formula, including nine-minute presentations from a broad-based faculty, both geographically and clinically, including all major vendors of CT equipment. We continually reinvent new ways of presenting the most cutting-edge research available."

Attendees with a particular interest in cardiovascular imaging can go to a stand-alone program on Saturday, June 17, dedicated to cardiovascular CT. There, an equal mix of radiologists and cardiologists present lectures on everything from various protocols for 16- to 64-slice scanners to optimal use of contrast agents and creation of a dedicated cardiac CT practice. There will also be updates for a number of trials:

• Accuracy of 16-Row MDCT Coronary Angiography - Multi-center Trial Results

• Multi-Center and Multi-Vendor Trial of 16-Row Coronary CTA Study for Detecting Coronary Artery Stenosis

• Core64: Trial Design and Enrollment Update

Registrants this year will receive a fully accredited DVD of the meeting within a few months. The DVD is intended to help attendees feel more relaxed about choosing sessions, knowing they can digest the breadth of information later at their leisure, Rubin said.

As result of the implementation of the DVD, and to have a more flexible flow through the meeting, all breaks except lunch have been eliminated. Attendees can leave the lecture room and view sessions in alternate locations while sipping refreshments or checking out vendors.

New this year are vendor "lounges," customized environments separate from the normal exhibit space for hands-on training or other focused activity. GE Healthcare and TeraRecon will each have its own pavilion.

The Fourth Annual Workstation Face-Off has been expanded from five vendors to six: Barco, GE, Philips Medical Systems, Siemens, TeraRecon, and Vital Images. Vendors will try to outshine each other by demonstrating their capabilities, image qualities, and workflow strategies.