In 2010, EMBS launched a new series of forums addressing grand challenges in biomedical engineering. The mission of the forum series is to review significant progress made in the past decade in selected areas, and identify grand challenges facing the scientific community in those specific disciplines over the next decade.
EMBS has a strong portfolio of conferences including its flagship annual conference and several special topic conferences. These conferences accept unsolicited submissions that provide a platform for authors to present original R & D work in parallel oral or poster sessions. Such technical conferences provide an important platform to exchange original research ideas.
However, with the limited resources from government and industry to invest in research and development, there is a need to hold a forum to identify the grand challenges that we are facing in a scientific discipline and how best to invest resources so that the future will yield the greatest good.
It is our hope that such an open forum for debates would provide important guidance to the scientific community to focus the limited resources by tackling significant issues in order to have the most impact. In this new Forum series, leader from academia, government and industry will be invited to present their visions. All presentations are by invitation only, and all the participants will be encouraged to join the interactive panel discussions that will follow the invited presentations.
The first IEEE-EMBS Grand Challenge Forum addressed grand challenges in Neuroengineering. This meeting, the second IEEE-EMBS Grand Challenge Forum will focus on Biomedical Imaging. Given the wide scope and importance of imaging science in the fields of medicine, biology and engineering, we have selected six topics of foci, including (1) Molecular and Optical Imaging, (2) Medical Image Analysis, (3) Biological Imaging, (4) Cardiac and Vascular Imaging, (5) Neuro Imaging and (6) Informatics data mining and PACS. Looking into the future, we also include a special session on education, entitled “Training the next generation of imaging scientists.”
The field of Biomedical Imaging has evolved to play an important role in validating and understanding complex molecular interactions and physiology. Today imaging spans scales from the nano to the macro levels of analysis. In today’s world economy, we must choose wisely where to invest our resources, while paying attention to the operational costs of any new technology that we my wish to introduce into the the healthcare system.
The expression “Seeing is Believing” holds in not all, but many areas of science and engineering. While fantastic progress has been made over the last 40 years in the fields of computer vision, signal processing and medical imaging, there remain some fundamental bottlenecks that if solved, could have tremendous impact. It is the intent of this meeting to identify these bottlenecks and possible pathways / solutions to overcome them.
EMBS has played a leadership role in shaping the development of biomedical imaging through excellent representation in its annual conference and its special topic conference – IEEE EMBS International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), which has continued to provide a very selective platform for the presentation of original research work.
The IEEE-EMBS Forum on Grand Challenges in Biomedical Imaging will further EMBS’ efforts in promoting this important field. The outcome of the Forum shall be a white paper that answer questions including where are we, what are the major obstacles and challenges, and where should the field invest resources in the next decade. The Forum will be held from February 29 –March 2, 2012 in Bethesda, next to NIH campus. We welcome your suggestions for the next grand challenge meeting or your interest to participate in the Forum. Please email to the EMBS Executive Office at emb-conferences@ieee.org.
Best regards,
Andrew Laine
Chair, Steering Committee
IEEE EMBS Grand Challenges in Biomedical Imaging