• No Icebreaker - Plan to join your colleagues during the 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM beer and refreshment break in the exhibit hall.
• Residents now qualify for Student registration fees. See details under Student Registration.
• Single LCD projection will be the ONLY presentation method available for oral presentations.
• Remember.... sessions & exhibits all now begin on Sunday.

January 8, 2003

Dear colleagues in diagnostic imaging/physics:

I am writing this letter to encourage you to consider submitting your abstracts for presentation at the 2003 AAPM meeting in San Diego.

Over the past few years, there has been a drop in attendance and the number of submissions to the AAPM conference in the diagnostic medical physics and medical imaging areas. While this may be attributed to the increasing sub-specialization of our field and the existence of a number of excellent sub-specialty conferences (such as SPIE Medical Imaging and IEEE Medical Imaging), I would like to point out to you two distinct advantages of the AAPM:

1. The AAPM is currently the only professional and scientific organization that is run by medical physicists. It is truly the only organization that can represent many of us in a professional or scientific capacity at the national level. It is vital to support and foster the only national association that we can truly call our own.
2. The AAPM is currently the only organization with dual representation of both therapeutic and diagnostic medical physicists. As medicine is progressing toward closer integration of various disciplines in a patient-focused environment, many exciting technologies have emerged at the intersection of these two sub-disciplines (e.g., image guidance radiotherapy, intravascular brachytherapy, monocolonal antibody diagnosis and therapy). The AAPM provides a unique opportunity for synergetic scientific exchanges that can have a significant impact on the practice of medicine. It is good to be at the crossroads of such exchanges.

In addition, I am pleased to inform you that a number of steps have been taken to enhance the diagnostic offerings of the 2003 annual meeting. A number of scientific symposia, panel discussions, and workshops on various new and emerging topics are planned including the following:

• New advances in breast imaging, directed by John Boone
• Unanswered questions in CAD research, co-directed by Carey Floyd and Joseph Lo
• Performance assessment of DR systems, directed by Tony Seibert
• DR advanced applications, directed by James Dobbins
• Practical aspects of DQE measurements, directed by Paul Granfors
• Practical aspects of CAD research, directed by Samuel Armato
• Radiographic image processing, directed by Michael Flynn
• Image-guidance therapy, co-directed by Jeff Siewerdsen and David Jaffray
• Molecular imaging, directed by Kiaran McGee
• TG18 display characterization workshop, directed by Ehsan Samei
• Non-ionizing Imaging (a special 2-day symposium), directed by Elizabeth Berry

Most symposia will include a panel discussion aiming to define the current state of the field and to distill the thinking of the experts. Updated information about the program can be obtained from the AAPM website.

I therefore want to encourage you to plan to attend the AAPM meeting, and to seriously consider presenting your work. The program committee welcomes submissions of basic research as well as more clinically-oriented topics concerning the implementation and the clinical evaluation of new technologies and techniques. Abstracts are due March 5th.

I look forward to seeing many outstanding abstracts, and to meeting many of you in person in San Diego.

Ehsan Samei, PhD, DABR
Scientific Program Co-director, AAPM 2003