Washington, D.C. (July 9, 2010) — At the 52nd meeting of the
American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), which
convenes from July 18 – 22, 2010 in Philadelphia, PA, thousands of
scientists and board-certified health professionals will gather to
share the latest developments in medical imaging and radiation
therapy, examine new clinical and laboratory data, and discuss many
of the ethical and regulatory issues that face the field today.
Preliminary highlights of the meeting are listed below.
Journalists are invited to attend the 52nd AAPM meeting for free.
Registration information appears at the end of this release.
- PATIENT SAFETY: A Special Symposium
- CANCER SURVIVAL: President’s Symposium Reveals One Patient’s
Story - PEDIATRIC RADIATION DOSE: Method for Reducing Radiation Dose
from imaging tests to Pediatric Populations - NANOTECHNOLOGY: Devices for Drug Delivery and Hyperthermia
- CT RADIATION DOSE: Symposium on CT Dose Measurement and
Reduction - BREAST CANCER: Reducing Skin Doses during Breast
Brachytherapy - RADIATION IN UTERO: Assessing and Minimizing Radiation Dose on
a fetus - MEDICAL WASTE: Medical Radionuclides in Wastewater
- CANCER DETECTION: New Imaging Device for Tumor Detection
- CLINICAL RESULTS: Radiation Treatment for Paranasal Sinus
Tumors - NANOTECHNOLOGY: Symposium on Nanotechnology and Cancer
- NEW STANDARDS: Measurement Standards for Brachytherapy
- SAFETY: International Atomic Energy Agency “Smart Card”
Radiation Dose Initiative - NEW DEVICE: Treatment Couch Tracks Tumors in Real-Time
- GUIDELINES: Upcoming FDA Handbook on CT Dose
- NEW TECHNOLOGY: Emerging X-ray Detector Technologies
- SAFETY: New U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Statement
- COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS: A Web-based Dose Calculator
- LICENSURE: Medical Physicists
- FUNDING: New National Cancer Institute Initiatives
1) PATIENT SAFETY: A Special Symposium
“The goals of the symposium will be to present the background to
the recent increase in awareness and what the AAPM and
international organizations are doing to improve patient
safety.”
MORE:
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/2010AM/PRAbs.asp?mid=49&aid=14600
2) CANCER SURVIVAL: President’s Symposium Reveals One Patient’s
Story
“Professor Jim Donnelly is a head and neck cancer survivor and he
will relate his unique perspective of the experience from symptoms,
through diagnosis and treatment. His physician, Dr. Robert Foote,
will provide the doctor’s point of view focused on an individual
human being. We will see through the patient’s eyes how the
technology and procedures we develop are perceived and how their
use throughout the medical process contributes to the profound
impact on everything in Jim’s life.”
MORE:
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-14635-54790-727.pdf
3) PEDIATRIC RADIATION DOSE: Method for Reducing Radiation Dose
from Imaging Tests to Pediatric Populations
“To date, the combination of these efforts has led to an average
reduction in dose of 23%. Additional approaches (adaptive
statistical iterative reconstruction and organ shielding) are
currently being evaluated and are expected to provide even greater
dose-savings to our pediatric patients.”
MORE:
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-12996-5072-477.pdf
4) NANOTECHNOLOGY: Devices for Drug Delivery and
Hyperthermia
“We developed a magnetic, nanoparticle-assembled capsule, which is
a multifunctional device that can be used simultaneously for both
controlled drug release and hyperthermia…”
MORE:
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13061-62578-357.pdf
5) CT RADIATION DOSE: Symposium on CT Dose Measurement and
Reduction
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/2010AM/PRSessions.asp?mid=49&sid=3527
6) BREAST CANCER: Reducing Skin Doses during Breast
Brachytherapy
“This project opens the possibility to increasing the survival
expectancy and minimizing negative side effects during
brachytherapy treatments, as well as improving cosmetic outcome for
all [Accelerated Partial Breast Irradiation] patients. The proposed
method may also be used in other procedures for brain, heart,
rectal, or vaginal cancers…”
MORE:
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13893-96571-987.pdf
7) RADIATION IN UTERO: Assessing and Minimizing Radiation Dose
on a fetus
“This work introduces a new set of fetal computational phantoms to
be used for use radiation dosimetry purposes… In the future,
completed fetal phantoms may be combined with an adult female
phantom to provide a powerful tool with which to simulate in utero
internal and external medical radiation exposures.”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13938-28275-687.pdf
8) MEDICAL WASTE: Medical Radionuclides in Wastewater
“Although research is ongoing it is conceivable that long lived
impurities from nuclear medicine procedures could make it into
municipal wastewater and possibly the environment.”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13321-61565-634.pdf
9) CANCER DETECTION: New Imaging Device for Tumor
Detection
“A novel tactile imaging device for tumor identification has been
designed and experimentally evaluated to be effective.”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13673-56966-519.pdf
10) Clinical RESULTS: Radiation Treatment for Paranasal Sinus
Tumors
“Between May 2001 and June 2008, 31 patients with PNS malignancies
were treated [at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA] with
[Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy]…”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-12575-55394-995.pdf
11) NANOTECHNOLOGY: Symposium on Nanotechnology and Cancer
“We will describe the latest research and development in this
exciting and rapidly advancing field. We will review newly
developed cancer diagnostics and therapies, including the
combination of imaging combined with drug delivery, based on
nanotechnology and identify future directions.”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/2010AM/PRSessions.asp?mid=49&sid=3488
12) NEW STANDARDS: Measurement Standards for Brachytherapy
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has
“designed, constructed, and validated the experimental apparatus
necessary for the measurement of air-kerma from an x-ray
brachytherapy source using a primary standard.”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13210-4174-840.pdf
13) SAFETY: International Atomic Energy Agency “Smart Card”
Radiation Dose Initiative
“The concept of “radiation passport” or something similar has been
around for over a decade but the current impetus is based on a)
realization of increased radiation doses to individual patients in
diagnostic and interventional procedures and b) possibility of
electronic means to achieve tracking of procedures…”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-14438-62523-620.pdf
14) NEW DEVICE: Treatment Couch Tracks Tumors in Real-Time
“To characterize the performance of a novel treatment couch
designed and developed for respiration-induced real-time tumor
motion tracking and to investigate its behavior with real tumor
trajectories…”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-14101-61878-855.pdf
15) GUIDELINES: Upcoming FDA Handbook on CT Dose
“The CT handbook will be a volume in a series promoting public
health and radiation safety through publicly accessible dose
information that could be used by medical staff to communicate risk
and optimize protocols reducing dose….”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13381-8526-951.pdf
16) NEW TECHNOLOGY: Emerging X-ray Detector Technologies
“The main topic of this Symposium talk is new development of
selenium-based x-ray imaging detectors…”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-14520-76805-761.pdf
17) SAFETY: New U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Statement
“NRC is in the process of updating and expanding its 1989 policy
statement on safety culture to include the full range of NRC
regulated activities and to better address security
issues…”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-14444-81305-423.pdf
18) COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS: A Web-based Dose Calculator
“The growing interest in patient doses has led to more frequent
requests for estimates of the dose imparted to patients by nuclear
medicine procedures. A Web-based computer application has been
developed to facilitate timely response to such requests and to
enable easy access to dosage-specific dose estimates within our
institution [M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston].”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-13040-51547-877.pdf
19) LICENSURE: Medical Physicists
AAPM’s Professional Council Symposium will give an update on the
licensure effort by the AAPM and the American College of Medical
Physicists (ACMP); describe the Federal legislative climate and how
it is influencing the issue; and discuss comprehensive registration
— an alternative to licensure.
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/2010AM/PRSessions.asp?mid=49&sid=3412
20) FUNDING: New National Cancer Institute Initiatives
“NCI has initiated a number of new initiatives that are focused on
the development of methods to develop and robustly validate current
and next generation of imaging platforms…”
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/49-14440-32663-378.pdf
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