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The Annual ARRS Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia

rstanley{at}uabmc.edu

Having had the pleasure of serving on the Executive Council of the American Roentgen Ray Society since 1988, I have had the opportunity to take part in the organization of many of our annual meetings over the years. In the span of the 18 years since I began serving, none of the annual meetings was held outside of the United States. So this year's meeting was unique in that it was held in Vancouver, British Columbia. The society has had only one other meeting in Canada, well before my time. While the venue added a special charm, what contributed the most was the excellence of the educational offerings.

From 1989 until 1994, I served as the chairman of the instructional course program and, in that capacity, interacted with many of my colleagues who were involved in organizing the annual meeting. So I have a frame of reference for comparing the quality of the more recent meetings held in the last few years to those in the early 1990s. From my perspective, the meetings have continuously improved, and this year was one of the best. The topics of the instructional courses were current, the scientific presentations by residents and young faculty were well attended and exceptionally well done, and the excellent monograph that arose from the categorical course on body MRI belongs in every training program's library as well as in the hands of our community practice members.

The Approach to Diagnosis: A Case-Based Imaging Review had a sold-out crowd with attendees ranging from residents to radiologists in practice. Across the board, the attendees said that they found it relevant and informative.

There was literally something for everyone, from Sunday through Friday. Early survey and evaluation responses point to a high degree of attendee satisfaction and give us all an ever higher benchmark to achieve next year in Orlando.

The registered attendance for this meeting, 3,016, was the highest since the record-setting New Orleans meeting in 1999, which was the last year that attendance at the meeting was free for members. Quite understandably, the number of Canadians in attendance was significantly higher than in past years, representing 16% of the total number of attendees. But there were also a good number of attendees who were from outside of North America. A total of 329 international registrants (15% of the total) were present in Vancouver.

I wholeheartedly extend my sincere congratulations to the meeting organizers, which includes the ARRS staff from Leesburg, Virginia, as well as all of the volunteer members of the society who put in many hours creating the program and inviting outstanding faculty. And on behalf of the AJR staff, I also wholeheartedly thank all of the presenters who shared their valuable time and expertise in preparing their presentations and joining us in the beautiful city of Vancouver. I hope that we will see a good number of these presentations as articles appearing in the AJR within the next year.

As the saying goes, "if you want to get a job done, ask a busy person." Many of the presenters also serve as reviewers for the AJR. I had the opportunity to personally meet and thank many of them at the editor's luncheon on Tuesday. Now that we have international reviewers serving on the reviewing team, I had the unique pleasure of visiting with several reviewers from Japan, Korea, Italy, India, and Spain, just to name a few of the countries represented. It is my hope that as our annual meeting becomes more international, we will be able to include some of our international guests as official presenters on the educational instructional course program.

As many of the readership may be aware, China and Japan now publish quarterly abridged versions of the AJR, usually containing four or five complete articles and up to a dozen abstracts translated from current issues of the monthly journal. We continue to look for opportunities to create such focused versions of the AJR in other countries.

Thus, this year's annual meeting reflected the changing "globalization" of medicine that is taking place in the 21st century. Those countries that are actively taking part in the globalization movement are well represented in the list of countries from which contributing authors to the journal come. And I think that you can get a good McDonald's hamburger in every one of them.

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This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Stanley, R. J. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Stanley, R. J. Social Bookmarking                      What's this?