The meeting is structured towards identifying bottlenecks and problems facing the field of biomedical and biological imaging. Each theme will have four 20 minute didactic presentations followed by a 30 minute Q&A session where we anticipate a lively discussion about real/existing challenges that we face in the application in biomedical imaging to problems in healthcare and advancing basic science. Throughout the meeting, and especially in the breakout sessions, we are asking you to actively participate and present your thoughts/suggestions on pathways to viable and practical solutions to those challenges. This is a different kind of approach to a meeting as we are looking to the audience to be an active participant in driving the content and output. At the end of the breakout session on Friday, we will synthesize the ideas generated in the breakout sessions and present them to the entire audience. Therefore the last hour of the meeting on Friday will be critical in accumulating and disseminating your collective solutions. This will also be the basis for the white paper we will produce, which may be published and/or posted on the website for public review after the meeting.

If you would like to do so, please send in via email to Dana Bernstein, challenges you would like the discussion group to focus on in advance.

To make the most use of our time, we have kept the lunch to 1-hour. We have reserved a ballroom so we can relax a bit and continue the conversation from the morning. If you would like to join us, we have arranged for a boxed lunch to be purchased. You will need to advise us in advance of your menu selection each day. You can either pay when you collect the sandwich (the hotel accepts cash only) or you can charge it to your sleeping room. Attached are the selections. Kindly select your lunch and bring this form with you when you check in on March 1 at the conference registration desk. We will not have extra food to be purchased the day of the meeting and all forms must be collected by 9am.

Please visit our website to view the program and abstracts. These lunch forms are available here.

The organizing committee has been very active in developing this meeting and, with your help, are looking forward to affecting positive change in the community and/or adding value by focusing resources on solving problems that are most likely to have the greatest impact in healthcare and the advancement of imaging science.

Your $275 registration fee will cover the meeting and breaks on Thursday and Friday, and a dinner on Thursday.

Space is limited and on a first come, first served basis.

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