NMISTC Report to AdCom, March 2008
Appendix 7.3
Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Technical Committee
Report to NPSS AdCom, March 2008
Charles Watson, NMISC Chair
NMISC annual meeting
The 2007 NMISC annual meeting was held November 2 in Honolulu, HI, in conjunction with the MIC.
Tom Lewellen was Chair. A summary will appear in the NMISTC section of the March NPSS newsletter.
These were the highlights:
1.
We received a final report on the 2006 MIC meeting from its Program Chair, John Aarsvold (see
below).
2.
Eric Frey, the Program Chair of the 2007 MIC summarized the status of that meeting for us.
3.
We discussed how to deal with the rapid growth of the MIC: expand indefinitely, or throttle
growth by increasing the rejection rate?
4.
The Council voted to approve Knoxville, Tennessee, as the site of the 2010 NSS/MIC.
5.
We conducted an election for vice-Chair of the Council and Robert Miyaoka of Washington
University was selected.
6.
A motion to AdCom re modifications to the Paul Phelps Continuing Education Grant, was
approved. It was subsequently approved by AdCom.
7.
Paul Kinahan announced this year’s winners of the IEEE Young Investigator Medical Imaging
Science Award: Paul Segars of Duke; and the Edward J Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist
Award: Ron Huesman of LBNL.
8.
Ron Jaszczak brought to our attention a couple of IEEE bio-activities sponsored by the
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society that we should be aware of, and may want to be
involved in (see below).
9.
We discussed the role of the 15 Council members-at-large in prosecuting its business (see below).
New NMISC members-at-large
An election was held for five members-at-large of the Council. The winners, and new NMISC members,
are: David Gilland, Dan J. Kadrmas, George Kontaxakis, Suleman Surti, and Katsuyuki (Ken) Taguchi.
MIC meetings
2005, Puerto Rico (Tom Lewellen, General Chair; Simon Cherry, MIC Program Chair)
 Papers submitted (MIC): 534. Accepted: 392. Rejection rate: 27%.
 Total registration (NSS/MIC) = 1244.
.
2006, San Diego (Graham Smith, General Chair; John Aarsvold, MIC Program Chair)
 Papers submitted (MIC): 587. Accepted: 555. Rejection rate: 5.5%.
 Total registration (NSS/MIC/RTSD) = 1605 (54.3% North American)
 This was a very successful meeting, the largest to date in North America.
 The books on the conference were closed in 2007 with a net return to the IEEE of $360,000.
 A summary report appears in the March 2007 NPSS newsletter.
2007, Honolulu (Benjamin Tsui, General Chair; Eric Frey, MIC Program Chair)
 Papers submitted (MIC): 670. Accepted: 576. Rejection rate: 14%.
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NMISTC Report to AdCom, March 2008
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Total registration (NSS/MIC) = 1750 (46% North American)
This was also a very successful meeting, with enhanced Asian/Pacific participation (21%).
Two innovations were parallel oral sessions, and the very well-received tutorial sessions.
I defer to Eric for additional details.
2008, Dresden (Uwe Bratzler, General Chair; Wolfgang Enghardt, MIC Program Chair)
 There will be a satellite workshop on MR/PET immediately following the MIC, held at
Research Center Jülich (Forschungszentrum Jülich, FZJ). It is co-sponsored (technical) by
NPSS.
 I defer to Uwe for a status summary.
2009, Orlando (Richard Lanza, General Chair; Ramsey Badawi, MIC Program Chair)
 Contract for the Hilton near Downtown Disney is signed.
 I defer to Dick for a status summary.
2010, Knoxville (Ron Keyser, General Chair; David Townsend, MIC Program Chair)
 According to Ron, 14 of the 18 committee positions have been confirmed.
 IEEE HQ and the hotels have agreed on a contract for 7000 room nights (not yet finalized).
 I defer to Ron for additional details.
2011/2012
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The NSS/MIC will likely go to Spain one of these years and to the West Coast of the US for
the other.
I defer to Craig Woody for an update.
Distinguished Lecturers
We are grateful to Bill Moses and David Townsend (University of Tennessee Medical Center) for agreeing
to represent NMIS in the DL program. They are both fellows of the IEEE and highly skilled speakers.
Their areas of expertise are complimentary, with Bill being a leading researcher in detector technology and
PET instrumentation, and David, the father of PET/CT, an expert on clinical multi-modality applications.
Competition and cooperation with other IEEE Societies
Ron Jaszczak brought to NMISC’s attention certain activities in medical and biological sciences by other
IEEE societies. These were discussed by the members via email. The issues are:
1. EMBS has a Medical Imaging and Imaging Processing Technical Committee whose interests and
meeting content may overlap those of the NMISTC, leading to competition. The Council felt that
while we do not have an interest in discouraging their TC, we should be concerned about the
potential for duplication of effort here. Perhaps the most efficient approach would be for us to
meet directly with the leadership of the EMBS MIIPTC to discuss ways to avoid unnecessary
overlap and make our programs as complementary as possible.
2. EMBS has sponsored a Special Interest Group whose goal is to "promote/enhance the IEEE
presence in the Bio & Health Sciences Community". The Council seemed to agree that we should
participate in this effort in order to make sure our work and the opportunities we offer are
adequately and fairly promoted.
3. The IEEE has established a Council on Biometrics, over the strong objection of the Computer
Society. A new Transactions on Biometrics is proposed. The feeling of the Council seemed to be
that such a journal does not significantly overlap TMI, and thus we are not (yet) concerned by it.
Reconciling NMITC and RITC constitutions
There remains a small discrepancy in the bylaws concerning the term of office of the Chair of the (joint)
Oversight subcommittee for the NSS/MIC. This should likely be resolved.
NMISTC: The term of office of the Chairperson of the Oversight Subcommittee shall be one year, but the
Chairperson may be re-appointed to the same position for no more than one additional term.
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NMISTC Report to AdCom, March 2008
RITC: The term of office of the Chairperson of the Oversight Committee shall be one year, but the
Chairperson may be re-appointed to the same position.
NMISC member-at-large participation
The members-at-large of the NMISC expressed general dissatisfaction at their level of participation in
Council decision making. A mechanism is needed to allow the work of the Council to be distributed more
uniformly. I solicit suggestions on how to accomplish this. I am considering forming ad hoc subcommittees to address significant issues and formulate recommendations. These may include:
 Policy on growth versus quality of MIC
 Discussions with EMBS-MIIPTC on cooperation
 Awards nomination subcommittee
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