MINUTES 2009 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences Council (NMISC) Annual General Meeting

Place: Poinsettia Room, Hilton Hotel at DisneyWorld, Orlando, FL.

Date and time: Friday October 30, 2009, 12:00-14:45

Attendees

Executive Officers:

Charles C Watson Chairperson Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc.

Robert Miyaoka Vice-Chairperson University of Washington

Tom Lewellen Past Chairperson & University of Washington

Chair, NMISC/RISC Joint Oversight Sub-Committee &

ADCOM Representative

George Kontaxakis Secretary & Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Chair, Nominations Sub-Committee

Anna Celler Chair, Awards/Fellows Sub-Committee University of British Columbia, Canada

Eric C Frey ADCOM Representative Johns Hopkins University

Related NPSS Positions:

Craig Woody NPSS President Brookhaven National Laboratory

Chuck Melcher RISC Chairperson University of Tennessee

Dick Lanza 2009 NSS-MIC General Chair Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ronald Keyser 2010 NSS-MIC General Chair Ortec

Ramsey Badawi 2009 MIC Chair University of Southern California

Craig Levin 2009 MIC Deputy Chair UCSD School of Medicine

David Townsend 2010 MIC Chair University of Tennessee Medical Center

NMISC Elected Members:

(term ending 2011):

Ronald J Jaszczak Duke University Medical Center

Raymond F Muzic, Jr Case Western Reserve University

Georges El Fakhri Massachusetts General Hospital

(term ending 2010):

David Gilland University of Florida

Dan J Kadrmas University of Utah

Suleman Surti University of Pennsylvania

Katsuyuki "Ken" Taguchi The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

(term ending 2009):

M'Hamed Bentourkia University of Sherbrooke

Yiping Shao University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

NMISC 2009 candidates:

Paul Lecoq CERN, Switzerland

Jinyi Qi University of California – Davis

Vesna Sossi University of British Columbia, Canada

Juan José Vaquero Hospital General Universitario “Gregorio Marañón”, Spain

Dimitris Visvikis INSERM, France

Excuse:

Paul E. Kinahan TNS Conference Issue Editor University of Washington

Ronald H. Huesman Chair of the Communications Lawrence Berkeley Lab

(Web) Sub-Committee

Wolgang Enghardt 2008 MIC Chair Oncoray, Germany

Irene Buvat NMISC Member (2011) CNRS, France

Krzysztof Iniewski NMISC Member (2011) Redlen Technologies Inc

Zhenghong Lee NMISC Member (2009) University Hospitals of Cleveland

Lukas Pichl NMISC Member (2009) International Christian University

Stefaan Tavernier NMISC 2009 candidate University of Brussels, Belgium

This year all six candidates for the NMISC 2009 elections were invited to participate to the meeting, as the election process was still on-going during the 2009 NSS/MIC.

Documentation distributed:

This meeting’s agenda

NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee – Procedures and Guidelines

2013 NSS/MIC Asia Sites Visit Report – August 2009 (available upon request to the Chair of the Oversight Subcommittee)

2009 Award Sub-Committee Report

Meeting’s Agenda:

1. Introduction and roll call - current members

2. Review and adoption of Agenda

3. Approval of the Minutes of Meeting of October 23, 2008

4. Chair’s report to NMISC

5. Election of new Vice-Chair

6. Status of 2009 NMISC election

7. 2008 NSS/MIC – Dresden (final)

8. 2009 NSS/MIC – Orlando (to date)

9. 2010 NSS/MIC – Knoxville (preview)

10. 2011 NSS/MIC – Valencia (preview)

11. Report by Chair of NMISC/RISC Joint Oversight Sub-Committee

12. Report by Chair of NMISC Awards-Fellow Sub-Committee

13. Report on NPSS AdCom activities

14. Other Business

1.	Welcome by Charles Watson, NMISC Chair. Charles announced that the meeting will be recorded for documentation purposes, with the unanimous agreement of all participants.
2.	The meeting’s agenda is approved unanimously.
3.	A motion was moved to accept the 2008 NMISC AGM minutes, carried unanimously, too.
4.	Taking the opportunity of the presence at the meeting of the 2009 NMISC candidates, Charles Watson initiates the Chair’s report by presenting an overview of the IEEE/NPSS/NMISTC structure: The IEEE is composed of 38 Societies, NPSS being one of them. The NPSS has several Technical Committees (TC). One is the Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences TC (NMISTC), composed of all IEEE-NPSS members interested in the topics presented at the Medical Imaging Conference. The NMIS Council (NMISC) constitutes the governing body of the NMISTC. The Joint Executive Subcommittee of the NMIS Council, consisting of the Chair, the Vice-chair and the Most Recent Past Chair of the NMISC and the corresponding persons from the RISC, appoint the Chair of the NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee (currently this person is Tom Lewellen). The Chairperson of the Oversight Subcommittee appoints the subcommittee’s membership. This subcommittee is in charge of the site selection for the future NSS/MIC events and also decides on the General Chair of each NSS/MIC, who then assigns the NSS and MIC Program Chairs. The role of the NMISC in that process is to provide oversight and policy guidance. Highlights of the NMISC activities in 2009: Tom Lewellen has been appointed as Chair of the NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee (OS) and prepared a document on the procedures and guidelines for its operation and the site selection process, as well as a report on the site selection process for the 2013 NSS/MIC. Anna Celler took over from Paul Kinahan as Chair of the Awards and Fellows Subcommittee Steve Meikle stepped down as NMISC Secretary and Nominations Subcommittee Chair. George Kontaxakis took over these roles beginning May 2009. Charles Watson brought a motion to the March 2009 AdCom meeting for the technical co-sponsorship by the IEEE of a Summer School held in Bratislava, Czech Republic. Although a prior formal approval of this by the NMISC was not possible to be obtained in advance, due to time restrictions. That was the fist time that the IEEE-NPSS has actively participated to the technical co-sponsorship (NPSS human resources mobilization for publicity, advertisement of the event at the NPSS Web site, etc.) of a Summer School, which was finally a very successful event. There was also a motion from Ron Jaszczak and Randy Brill to withdraw from the IEEE Biometrics Council, of which NPSS is a charter member, as it appeared to be very little actual overlap between NMISTC interests and what the rest of the Council was doing. During that AdCom meeting however it became apparent that there was some new interest in this area from the Plasma Sciences TC, therefore the NPSS will continue forming part of the Biometrics Council without the presence of the NMISTC. There have been some modifications in the NMISTC Bylaws regarding the OS Chair’s term and some other minor issues in order to provide consistency with the RISTC Bylaws. These modifications have been approved by the NMISC and will be published in the next NPSS Newsletter. Charles Watson thanked the 2009 MIC Chair Ramsey Badawi and Deputy Chair Craig Levin for the excellent job in the organization of this year’s event. Other issues that need further attention: The NMISC Web site needs to be upgraded, in collaboration with the team that did the new Web site of the NPSS. Ron Huesman, the current Communications Chair, is currently in charge of the maintenance of the current NMISC Web site, however does not have availability to undertake a major upgrade. Charles Watson mentioned that a new person, member of the NMISC, is needed to undertake this task and work to guarantee the consistency in appearance and content with the new NPSS Web site. . The issue of the automatic submission of TNS published papers to PubMed is not yet resolved. NIH grantees are requested to make their papers available through PubMed within 12 months from their publication, however the IEEE TNS policy currently does not allow these papers to appear in PubMed during the first 12 months from the paper’s publication at the TNS journal. Charles Watson committed to follow-up this issue at the next AdCom meeting. A question was brought forward by Charles Watson and David Townsend, in charge of next year’s MIC, regarding if future MIC meetings should have parallel sessions or not. Discussion on that topic has been reserved for the “Other Business” item in the meeting’s agenda. Another item that needs further discussion is the issue of the development of a formal policy for paper selection for the NSS/MIC. That topic has been also reserved for the “Other Business” item in the meeting’s agenda.
5.	Suleman Surti was the unique candidate nominated for the position of the new NMISC Vice Chair, to replace Robert Miyaoka who will take over as new NMISC Chair in 2010. Suleman was elected as new incoming NMISC Vice Chair unanimously.
6.	George Kontaxakis gave a short report on the status of the 2009 NMISC elections. As Chair of the Nominations Subcommittee, George reminded that one third of the NMISC is renewed every year and appealed to the NMISC members to participate actively in seeking new candidates for each year’s elections. Every member of the NPSS that is interested in MIC topics can nominate a candidate for the NMISC. Self-nominations are also accepted. In 2009 the nominations process took place during the end of Spring through the beginning of Summer and the 6 candidates were nominated (Paul Lecoq, Jinyi Qi, Stefaan Tavernier, Juan José Vaquero, Dimitris Visvikis and Vesna Sossi). In 2009 the IEEE and the NPSS TC elections have been carried out all together, which introduced some delay in the election’s process. This process was on-going during the meeting and foreseen to conclude in the beginning of December. Charles Watson mentioned that IEEE encouraged voters to cast their ballots electronically. For 2010 IEEE plans to establish a 100% electronic voting system. He also reminded that those NMISC members, whose term ends, need to wait one year before they can be again candidates to the NMISC elections.
7.	Report on the 2008 MIC by Wolfgang Enghardt, 2008 MIC Program Chair (presented by George Kontaxakis): 2008 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD, 19-25 October, held in Dresden, Germany. Attendance: 2564 attendees from 56 countries (25% Germany, 23% USA, Italy/France/Japan 6% each, U.K. 5%, Switzerland 4%, Spain 2%, other countries 22%) to the whole conference. Regarding the 2008 MIC, there were 761 submitted scientific papers (in comparison to 660 submitted in 2007). Each paper was reviewed by 3 reviewers (total number of reviewers: 325). There were two reviewing criteria: 1. technical merit (scoring from 1 (low) to 5 (excellent)) and 2. originality and innovation (scoring 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent)). One paper scored 10 (F. Fischer, U. Hampel, R. Bergmann, “Electron Beam CT – A Potential Tool for Small Animal Imaging?”, FZ Dresden-Rossendorf, Dresden, Germany). Following a selection process, 99 papers scored 7.0 or above and were assigned as oral presentations (in the MIC or the NSS/MIC joint sessions). Another 520 papers were assigned as poster presentations and 142 papers that scored below 5.0 or 2 or more reviewers recommended rejection were rejected. There were in total 12 oral sessions in the 2008 MIC (90 presentations) and 2 poster sessions: 516 posters (that is, there were only 4 no-shows in the poster sessions). Furthermore, there was one NSS/MIC/RTSD joint session in which 6 additional presentations were held and two NSS/MIC joint sessions with another 14 oral presentations. The MIC Student Paper Award was selected from the posters presented by students. The selection was performed based on the scoring (poster average review score of 7.0 or higher). The final selection was performed by the 2008 MIC Student Paper Award committee: I. Buvat, W. Enghardt, T. Lewellen, C. Thompson, S. Ziegler. There was one first place award (certificate and US $500) and a second place award (certificate only). There were also 33 MIC Student Grants of 500€ to oral presenters and 102 Grants of 300€ to poster presenters, totaling an amount of 47.100 €. The 2008 MIC Student Scholarship Committee was composed by K.D. Müller (Chair), Jülich; M. Keyser, Oakridge; K. Funke, Dresden. The sponsors of the Grants were the following organizations: ASP-Torino; Czech University of Technology, Prague; IAEA; IEEE-NPSS; US Department of Defense; US Department of Energy; US Department of Homeland Security; Saxon Ministry of Science and the Fine Arts, Germany. Further remarks by the 2008 MIC Program Chair: The number of participants and contributions (761) to IEEE MIC (a) is reaching a critical limit which may force at least two parallel sessions; (b) there is a high number of poster presentations and too few oral presentations, something that might lead to a decreasing interest in the MIC, although improperly scheduled parallel sessions may also reduce scientific quality and impact. No parallel sessions were scheduled at the 2008 MIC in Dresden, which resulted in (a) overcrowded poster sessions; (b) 34 papers with an average review score of 7.0 or higher being shown as posters, (c) the selection of the Student Paper Award among the poster presentations and (d) a high scientific level of the oral sessions. Regarding the review process: the quality and reliability of the reviewers was impressive; strict scientific criteria have been applied by the reviewers as well as in the final selection process by the chairpersons; a rejection rate of ~20 % was judged by the 2008 MIC Program Chair as appropriate to preserve the scientific quality of the MIC; the recruitment of further reviewers on non-nuclear imaging methods (X-ray imaging, nuclear magnetic resonance, etc.) is recommended, as an increasing number of papers on multi modality imaging has been observed. Regarding the MIC Workshops: According to the opinion of the 2008 MIC Program Chair, these should be completely avoided or reduced to a minimum, as they might defocus and dilute the conference and their contributions might not follow the regular review process. Some contributions to the 2008 MIC Workshops were judged to be of quite low scientific quality. Two out of the six 2008 MIC Workshops (“Molecular Radiology of Breast Cancer” and “Gate Software for Emission Tomography”) were considered as quite successful and of high scientific and technical quality. In general, the MIC Workshops: (a) address important topics, but not of common interest; (b) these topics might have minor overlap with the main conference topics; (c) the other four workshops could have fitted completely within the topics of MIC and thus could have been avoided. In a follow-up discussion on the above, Charles Watson mentioned that the selection procedure for oral vs. poster presentations might not be based only on a scoring threshold, but also on other criteria, principally on a decision on which is the best way to present the material described in an accepted abstract and not exclusively on the fact one paper is better or worse than the rest. Tom Lewellen agreed that there is a lot more work for the selection procedure in addition to simply setting a score for each of the presentations and employing a threshold to separate orals from posters. Space considerations should follow the selection process rather than guiding this process. Craig Levin proposes that during the review process, the reviewers should state their opinion if a paper under review is suitable for oral or poster presentation, in addition to the preference declared by the paper’s authors. A common agreement was on the fact that there might be good papers, with quite high score during the review, which might be quite “dense” in terms of the material presented and might not be suitable for a typical oral presentation unless the audience is well knowledgeable of the details of the work presented. On the other hand, it should also be taken into consideration that some institutions would only provide funds for conference attendance to those authors that have been assigned an oral presentation. It is recommended that a campaign is undertaken in future meetings, in order to transmit the message that a poster presentation does not automatically mean lower scientific and technical quality of the paper submitted. In addition, it has been recommended that further actions might be necessary in future review tasks in order to avoid assigning simply higher scoring papers in the oral sessions and the lower scoring papers in the poster sessions. Ramsey Badawi noted that in this year’s MIC an additional category of “premium posters” has been introduced for those high scoring papers that were not possible to be assigned as orals. Another issue addressed was the fact some research groups submit more than one paper on very similar topics, something that might produce redundancy in the presentations. Regarding workshops, Crain Levin said that all papers presented at the 2009 MIC workshops have been reviewed together with regular papers and have also been included in the Conference Program. There is a common agreement that this issue needs further discussion, as workshops might yet be considered as “thin sessions” due to possibly lower review standards and might also represent a cover-up of parallel sessions, an issue that is still under open debate for future MIC events. Craig Levin proposes that the data, comments and remarks, such as those expressed here by the 2008 MIC Program Chair or even the results from each year’s surveys, are made available to the NMISC and the future MIC Program Chairs a few months after the MIC´s closure and not that late as one year after and during the course of the next MIC.
8.	Report on the 2009 MIC by Ramsey Badawi, 2009 MIC Program Chair: There were 592 papers submitted, of which 67 were rejected, 83 assigned as oral presentations (no parallel sessions) and 404 poster presentations, of which 47 were designated as premium posters (grouped together and allowed larger space for each poster that regular posters). There were three poster sessions. Furthermore, there were 3 invited talks and 4 workshops. Complaints received so far: as posters were distributed in two different locations, it was not clear where each poster was located. It was mentioned that the exact location of each poster must be clearly indicated in the program booklet. Ramsey Badawi answered that the exact space allocation was not known to the MIC organizers beforehand. Craig Levin addressed the issue of the poster sessions being adjacent to the commercial exhibits area, something that might jeopardize the security of the commercial exhibit material, according to Tom Lewellen. In any case, this year there was a poster map, which however was quite hard to interpret. It has been recommended that for future MIC events, a better planning of the poster layout and their locations is carried out. Ramsey Badawi added that there has been a compromise between the difficulty in locating the room for a particular poster with the fact that this year more space has been allocated for people to move around and read the posters. In addition, every third poster in a row belonged to the same session. This measure has been proven quite efficient in keeping the poster area decongested.
9.	Report on the progress of the 2010 MIC by David Townsend, 2010 MIC Program Chair: Contacts between the current and 2010 MIC Program Chairs have been already carried out. A list of reviewers is being elaborated for the 2010 MIC and the issue of cross-modality experts has been considered. The decision on whether or not to have parallel sessions in the MIC has not been made. Session chairs have been identified, the refresher courses, a quite successful part of past conferences, will appear again in 2010 MIC. The venue for the MIC dinner is still under consideration. Potential plenary speakers are being sought. Two potential candidates could be Atul Gawande, MD, a physician from Boston famous for his books (“Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science”, “Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance”, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”), and Greg Sorenson, MD, who has given a very interesting plenary talk at the past SNM on the applications of MRI-PET. On that topic (MRI-PET) there is also a proposal for a workshop by Paul Marsden, with emphasis on the PET side. Other suggestions for potential plenary speakers are welcome. Regarding the poster sessions, recommendations from the 2009 MIC Program Chair are being considered, and posters have been planned to go up on Wednesday (11/03/2010) afternoon after NSS posters are removed and would stay until Saturday (11/06/2010). A suggestion to avoid poster sessions on specific topics is being considered, so that authors interested on topics similar to the ones of their own posters are able to follow their presentation in different sessions. Joint sessions have become very interesting, as a result of the cross-fertilization between detector development issues from the NSS side and applications on the MIC side, therefore such sessions will get significant importance during the 2010 NSS/MIC, although they will still most likely occur within one day. Decisions on this issue will be taken in collaboration with John Valentine, NSS Program Chair, and Ralph James, RTSD Co-Chair.
10.	Report on the progress of the 2011 MIC by David Townsend, 2011 NSS/MIC General Chair: The 2011 MIC Program Chair will be Alberto Del Guerra, who was unable to join the Orlando NSS/MIC. Program details are not yet available. José Manuel Pérez from CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain, is the Conference Coordinator. The Conference will be held in Valencia, Spain, on the east coast of Spain, a medium sized city with good transportation (bus, metro) and communication. The Valencia Conference Centre (VCC) is a couple of km away from the city’s centre. Some important attractions are the fact the city is on the sea side, Valencia’s port has been the site of the America’s Cup in 2008, and there is also a Formula 1 track through the city on its sea side. Valencia has plenty of modern hotels, modern architecture as well as historical buildings and market places. David Townsend is totally convinced about the city’s beauty and stressed the fact the VCC, where the 2011 NSS/MIC will take place is adjacent to a number of major hotel blocks, especially the Hilton and Sorolla hotels, in which room blocks have already been booked. One of the major challenges to be faced by the 2011 Conference would be to fit the event within the space available, as the VCC´s capacity is just to the limits of the expected attendance of the NSS/MIC. David Townsend is somewhat concerned that if the Dresden attendance levels are reached that might constitute a serious challenge for the capacity of VCC. On the other side, the hotel availability in the city is not expected to be a problem, as Valencia offers a complete range of hotel rooms from the Sorolla/Hilton ones at the higher range to the low-medium range hotels, such as Ibis, Novotel, etc. Regarding the 2011 MIC Program Committee, apart from Alberto Del Guerra who will be the MIC Program Chair, Juan José Vaquero will be the MIC Co-Chair. The majority of the Committee members are already identified, pairing when possible Spanish participants with US colleagues, with previous expertise in NSS/MIC organization issues. In that way, a good mix of people that can deal with the local organization and those that are experienced in organizing large scale IEEE events is achieved. So far, contracts are signed with the VCC and the local hotels, as well as with a local company, which was already in charge of the Oversight Committee’s visits. This company will be in charge of the local infrastructure, the negotiations with the hotels, etc. The Web service for registration, etc., is also ready for contract signature, and other details such as networking, catering, etc. The City Hall of Valencia is also ready to help and will most probably provide the MIC dinner venue without charge to the Conference. However, final commitments will be formally taken after regional and municipal elections in the region of Valencia scheduled for the first trimester in 2011 and the consequent renovation of the regional government and the municipality. The existence of a bank account in euros and a different one in US dollars are somehow complicating the financial issues, however this is not considered as a major problem. CIEMAT from Madrid, currently directed by Juan Antonio Rubio is the main institution that provides support and coordination, in collaboration with the Foundation of the University Carlos III (non-profit Foundation which will take care of financial issues related to the European VAT) and several other local Spanish groups interested in the event’s organization. The 2011 NSS/MIC is being organized with a provision for 1500 – 1700 attendees, although the organization is prepared to accommodate up to 500 more attendees, if needed. According to the follow-up ad hoc discussion on that issue, it has been mentioned that the rejection rate might be a controlling factor to the final number of attendees, with care however not to reach the 28% rejection rate observed in the 2005 MIC, which caused heavy complaints by the authors. It has been also mentioned that Conferences held in Europe in the past (2000, 2004 and 2008) indicate that the number of attendees is always higher than in Conferences held in the US, therefore a number of 2000 attendees might be a more realistic expectation for 2011. Craig Woody pointed out that for 2009 there has been a 20% decrease in attendance in most IEEE Conferences, including the 2009 NSS/MIC. David Townsend concluded mentioning that in February 2011 a subcommittee meeting will take place in Valencia in order to address all organizational pending issues.
11.	Tom Lewellen presents the NMISC/RISC Joint Oversight Sub-Committee, the group that makes the decision on future NSS/MIC sites. Tom stressed that the OS, in collaboration with the IEEE Conference Business Services and other involved parties perform multiple checks, reviews and controls over the draft contracts with providers before IEEE finally signs them – it is always IEEE that puts the final signature to the contracts of such conferences, since these are always IEEE sponsored official events. More details on the OS in the annexed “NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee – Procedures and Guidelines”. Tom Lewellen, General Chair of the 2012 NSS/MIC, presents a brief overview of the 2012 NSS/MIC preparations. The meeting will be held in Anaheim, CA. Ample space is available and most of the Program Committee is formed, and the budget is almost ready to be submitted to the NPSS before the end of the year (2009). Furthermore, Tom Lewellen mentioned that the 2014 NSS/MIC will be held again in USA. Previous candidate sites will be re-visited and re-considered, however the Oversight Committee is interested to hear proposals for alternative sites. Tom Lewellen addressed the issue of the site selection for the 2013 NSS/MIC to a great detail. As a summary, the following points can be mentioned: In February 2009, a vote was taken by the Oversight Committee of possible cities to site visit for the 2013 NSS/MIC meeting, based on the proposals submitted to the committee in the Fall of 2008 for sites in Asia. The top three sites were Beijing China, Seoul Korea, and Cairns Australia. Subsequently, a site visit team made arrangements to visit Beijing and Seoul from August 1-8, 2009. Tom Lewellen site visited Cairns on August 28-30, 2009. In that sense, the selection process for 2013 was somewhat unique in that this is the first time we have had to consider proposals from three different countries rather than our normal three different cities in one country. Of the three candidate sites, the Australian one is the smallest in terms of the convention center space, but it does layout well and could support a large meeting with the use of adjoining hotels for workshops and short courses. Major concerns for the Australian site include the capacity of the conference center, if a very large meeting should occur, and the cost of booking flights a short time (~ 2 months) prior to the conference. With the current proposed budget, it also has the highest registration fee and the highest F&B budget. If Australia is selected as the site, then the F&B allocations versus the registration fees should be reconsidered. The Korean and Australian sites offer more options close by the convention centers and hotels for restaurants and shops. The room rates are comparable at all three sites. The most active IEEE sections willing to support the conference are in Korea. All three sites have a core group of very active, dedicated individuals supporting the meetings. The clearest demonstration of support by local governments and other institutions during the site visit was in Korea where the committee is exceptionally well organized. Since the site visit, both China and Australia have obtained more sponsorship commitments, both from industry and government sources. All three site committees have submitted plans on how to include individuals from other countries in the region as active members of the core conference committees. Of the three convention centers, the one in China was the lowest quality (although still more than adequate and generally pleasant) but with a high noise level in areas for posters and in the hallways. The current Beijing proposal now includes carpeting to reduce the noise levels. The sites in Korea and Australia were better noise controlled and, in particular, all areas in the Australian center are carpeted. It was not clear how well the conference center in China can support areas for casual conversation (they stated they would put out table rounds and chairs, but did not commit to how many were available without extra cost). The Korean and Australian centers have inventories of tables and padded chairs they would put out in hallways and nooks for conversation areas. In Korea, attendees can also go to any of the coffee shops or other food areas in the huge shopping center under the convention center. The budgets in China and Korea are both showing good revenue over expenses - particularly for the Beijing proposal and should have considerable flexibility in supporting key aspects of the conference much as increase student support or consideration of using the new conference center instead of the BICC. After considering the outcomes of the site visits, the Oversight Committee conducted two voting rounds. The results of these initial voting rounds had Korea as the leader for 2013. The final selection will be made after opinions are gathered from the RISC and NMISC committees at their respective annual general meetings, as well as any additional information supplied by the Korean and Chinese committees by the end of the conference. Furthermore, several comments have been made by the attendees on how often the conference shall be held in the US versus overseas, considering, among others, the percentage of membership in each continent/region and its evolution, as well as its sustainability.
12.	Anna Celler presented the report on the activities of the NMISC Awards-Fellow Sub-Committee. The report is annexed in this document, entitled “Award Sub-Committee Report”. Anna stressed the importance of having the nominees for the awards as early as possible and requested the collaboration of all members of the NMISC in that respect. Ben Tsui was the unique nominee this year for the 2009 Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award. There were four nominations for the 2009 Bruce H. Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award, and the selection has been quite difficult. After two voting rounds Katia Parodi won the award this year. Anna commented that only one of the other three nominees will still be eligible to run for the award next year.
13.	Eric Frey reported on the NPSS AdCom survey carried out in July 2009 to the Society’s membership. This was the first year that kind of survey was performed using electronic means (online survey). 1300 responses have been received from over 3200 NPSS members requested to participate to the survey. The survey consisted of 44 questions in total. NMISTC has been shown to be the largest technical committee of NPSS, with the RISTC scoring second with little difference. Other questions related to the quality of the IEEE TNS journal, which was found to be equal or better than the quality of similar journals in the area of physics and engineering, however in the field of medical imaging the journal was judged to be of equal or lesser quality as compared to other ones such as Physics in Medicine and Biology, Medical Physics, IEEE TMI, etc. Most NPSS members responded that they attend the NSS/MIC, which turned to be out the biggest event of interest to members. US responders represented about 66% of the total, Europeans were about 25% of the responders and Asians represented approx. 7%. Eric believes that this percentage might increase if the conference is moved to Asia by the year 2013.
14.	In the “Other Business” item, Charles Watson commented on previous survey results from a past conference, in which 35% of the responders chose one poster session a day and also most preferred parallel sessions in the MIC. Regarding future meetings, however, the decision on having parallel sessions in the MIC or not will be left up to the MIC Program Chair. Anna Celler brought up the issue of including papers in the MIC related to “non-nuclear” or “non-ionizing” medical imaging modalities. Apart from PET-MRI works, Anna commented that an oral presentation at this year’s MIC on a MRI work was hardly followed by the audience due to lack of specific knowledge from most of the talk’s attendees. Anna supports the opinion that inclusion of such papers in the MIC presentations dilutes the meeting’s focus and does not provide any added value to the presenters, due to the lack of quality feedback from the audience. Charles Watson mentioned that such papers might be better suitable for poster presentations; however he pointed out that in future MIC events, papers on PET-MRI or other similar hybrid technologies might be more and more numerous. Anna Celler proposes the inclusion of short courses on those different imaging modalities so that MIC attendees have the opportunity to learn more about these techniques. Juan José Vaquero stated that MRI experts would most probably attend different conferences specialized on MRI and only researchers with some affinity to nuclear medicine imaging techniques would approach future MIC meetings to present MRI-related works. George Kontaxakis reminded that the last session of this year’s MIC included talks on fluorescence molecular tomography or magnetic particle imaging techniques. There was a consensus that papers presenting entirely non-nuclear or non-ionizing imaging techniques, such as optical imaging or magnetic resonance imaging, topics that would not normally be published at the NPSS journals, logically have no place in future MIC. The same would hold for papers described generic approaches for image processing, computer aided diagnosis, etc. Dimitris Visvikis suggested that the form completed by the MIC reviewers should contain an item in which the reviewer judges if a paper is suitable for the MIC or not. As an argument against, it was stated that talks on domains apparently not directly related to the exact topics of the Conference might still be of interest to the audience, in order to avoid re-inventing things already done by researchers in other fields. Furthermore, high-risk however also high-impact topics might be also of interest to the Conference’s audience. Tom Lewellen commented that probably the joint sessions might be good choices to have those papers accommodated to, however, he insisted that the Conference’s topics should still be confined on the principle interests and expertise of the Conference’s attendees. George Kontaxakis transmitted Irene Buvat’s comment on the non-photo taking policy of this year’s NSS/MIC, which according to her was not properly respected by the audience of the oral talks. Dick Lanza supported the decision on that policy addressing copyright issues that might be violated when people dedicate their conference attendance in taking pictures of the slides presented and later publishing that material without the author’s explicit agreement. Charles Watson addressed the issue of taking photos of the posters presented. Tom Lewellen commented that probably taking pictures of posters without permission might be technically disallowed; however this could be done with the author’s permission.

Meeting adjourned at 14:45 pm.

Annex I - NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee – Procedures and Guidelines

Last Revised: September 16, 2009

Revised by: Tom Lewellen, Charles Melcher, Craig Woody, Charles Watson

Introduction

The NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee (OS) is a joint Subcommittee of the Radiation Instrumentation Steering Committee (RISC) and the Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Council (NMISC). It was formed in 2005 as part of the revision of the Constitution and Bylaws of the Radiation Instrumentation Technical Committee (RITC), and its charge is specified in Section 3.5 of those Bylaws. The same charge is also specified in Section 3.5 of the Bylaws of the Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Technical Committee (NMISTC) Constitution. The purpose for forming this Subcommittee was to establish a working group of individuals which represented the interests of both the nuclear science and medical imaging communities that would provide guidance and oversight for the long term planning of the Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference. The main responsibility of the OS is to investigate possible future sites for the conference, taking into account numerous factors such as geographical location, including the desire to hold the meeting in countries outside US, as well as technical interests and local support in various regions. The committee also evaluates the strengths and capabilities of the individuals in those areas to carry out a successful meeting, and selects the General Chair of the conference. The OS is the working body that does site investigation and selection, but it receives its direction and guidance from both RISC and NMISC, and reports back to RISC and NMISC on all of its activities. It also provides continuous monitoring and oversight of conferences that have been already approved and are in the process of preparing to hold their meetings.

This document is a summary of the current tasks, procedures, and guidelines for the NSS/MIC Oversight Subcommittee (OS). The information here reflects the tasks as understood by the members of the OS. The procedures and general guidelines summarized in this document reflect the way the OS is currently conducting its duties and is an evolutionary process. The main goal for this document is two fold: 1) to provide an overview of the OS operations for review by the general memberships of RISC and NMISC; and 2) to capture the current procedures in use by the OS.

OS membership

The OS chair is appointed by the Joint Executive Subcommittee (JES) which consists of the current chairs, vice chairs, and most recent past chairs of the RISC and NMISC. The OS chair proposes other members of the committee and submits them to the JES for approval. The RISC and NMISC chairs are ex-officio voting members of the OS at all times. The general guidelines for the chair in recommending members are to balance: regions (US, Europe, and Asia); membership in RISC and NMISC; and prior experience.

For 2009, the membership is:

- Tom Lewellen, Chair (NMISC, USA, prior: general chair, MIC chair, local arrangements chair, OS member, NMSIC chair)

- Alberto Del Guerra (NMSIC and RISC, Europe, prior: general chair, OS member)

- Ramsey Badawi (NMISC, USA, prior: MIC deputy chair)

- Ron Keyser (RISC, USA, prior: treasurer, commercial exhibits chair, OS member, RISC chair, Site Selection Chair)

- Paul Lecoq (NMISC and RISC, Europe, prior: OS member)

- Craig Woody (RISC, USA, prior: general chair, NSS deputy chair, treasurer, OS member, RSIC chair)

- Ralf Engles (RISC, Europe, prior: local arrangements chair)

- Ren-Yuan Shu (RISC, USA and Asia)

- Charles Watson (NMISC Chair, USA)

- Chuck Melcher (RISC Chair, USA)

Tasks

The main tasks currently being undertaken by the OS are:

1. Selection of NSS/MIC conference sites
2. Work on conference site contracts

a. Hotels

b. Conference space

c. Registration support

d. Commercial exhibit support

e. Memorandums of understanding (MOUs) as needed for non-US conference locations

3. Selection of the general chair for each NSS/MIC conference
4. Review of progress of preparation for conferences
5. Provide support as requested/needed by conference general chairs.

The OS utilizes support from IEEE Meeting and Conference Management Services (MCMS) as needed for contract review, negotiation assistance, and related issues.

In recent years, we have adopted the position that major contracts (e.g., commercial exhibit and registration support) should go through a request for proposal process. The RFP may be prepared by an individual on the OS , or by someone outside the committee, but is reviewed and edited by all members of the committee. In that way, we review what our requirements are (both essential tasks and optional services), and compare the costs from several vendors. The evaluation criteria are not solely based on lowest cost, but also on prior experience with a given vendor, the quality of the services, and the flexibility of the proposed contract. In all cases, the responses are reviewed by all members of the OS committee and a blind vote taken for rank ordering the proposals. The final contract proposal is then submitted to IEEE and the NPSS conference treasurer for review and comment. All contracts in excess of $25K are reviewed and approved by IEEE Conference Business Services (CBS - Vita Feuerstein or her delegate) before being signed. All Memoranda of Understanding, which are typically required for conferences held outside the US, are also reviewed and approved by CBS before being signed.

The committee has also been able to assist the general chair and committees for a given conference year. For example, there was a problem with one of the hotel contracts for the 2011 meeting, and by working with IEEE convention services, we were able to help the 2011 committee resolve the problem and broker a fair contract with that hotel.

Site selection procedures

The philosophy of the OS has been to adopt a general procedure, but remain flexible if special circumstances arise. For example, while the general consensus of the RISC and NMISC has been that we should support meetings in USA, Europe, and Asia, there has not been a clear policy on frequency of the three main global regions. The current procedure is to look at potential sites in any one year and balance Europe, Asia, USA based on the potential for success of the proposed sites.

The basic site selection process begins with members of the OS or any other interested party proposing a location to the committee. In the case of locations outside the USA, the proposals have been from a group within a given country that wishes to have the NSS/MIC event there. An excellent example was the proposal from Spain that was presented by a group of RISC and NMISC members in that country – essentially the core of what has become the conference committee for 2011. Here is the current process in brief:

1. Solicit suggestions from RISC/NMISC membership and committee members for potential conference sites, typically based on expressions of interest from general attendees.
2. The committee member, individual or group proposing a given site, is asked to work up a summary of the site being proposed. Necessary activities include:
1. A basic requirements document for the conference is given to the site or related visitors/convention bureau, on which they can base a proposal
2. A layout of a typical meeting space is prepared for the conference venue.
3. Information is collected on initial offers in terms of cost, room nights, estimated costs for the attendees, etc. We further ask the proponents of the proposal to fill out our standard budget spreadsheet and make best estimates of income and expenses.
3. A summary of all the proposed sites for a given year is made and the committee discusses them and then does a blind vote to rank order the sites
4. The top 5 sites are investigated in more detail and discussed. Since the RISC and NMISC chairs are part of the committee, the RISC and NMISC membership can also be asked for their input.
5. A second blind vote is taken to generally select the top 3 sites, although this number could vary depending on the actual proposals.
6. The top sites are visited and more formal offers solicited.
7. The committee recruits a General Chair and includes that individual in subsequent site selection for that meeting year. If possible, the General Chair candidate is included early on in the site investigation, although depending on the particular situation in a given year, this may or may not be possible. For example, if multiple countries are being considered, there is generally a general chair being proposed by each country – and the final selection of the general chair can not precede the selection of the site. However, in either case, the final General Chair selected is one that concurs with the proposed site.
8. IEEE Meeting & Conference Management Services (Sherry Russ, et. al.) review the offers and make suggestions.
9. The information is discussed and another blind vote taken to rank order the sites.
10. The recommendations are then presented formally to RISC and NMISC and a vote is requested from them to endorse the recommendations.
11. Based on the RISC/NMISC votes, the OS is tasked to work out formal offers with the top two sites
12. The proposed contracts are reviewed by the OS, MCMS, and, if necessary, CBS.
13. Changes are made based on the IEEE and committee reviews.
14. The contracts are reviewed again by the committee and the final blind vote taken for final site selection.

The final contract is once again fine tuned and reviewed by the OS, sent for review to the NPSS conference treasurer, and finally to MCMS and CBS prior to being signed. The approved contract (or contracts) is then signed by the IEEE Procurement Department and the other participating parties.

Annex II - Award Sub-Committee Report, October 2009

This year it was for the fourth time that both the Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist and Medical Imaging Conference Young Investigator Awards have been awarded. It was also the first year when the name for the Young Investigator Award has been changed into the Bruce Hasegawa Young Investigator Award.

Some e-mail requests were sent and an advertising note was placed in the NPSS newsletter asking for nominations for NMISC award nominees. However, there was only one nomination for the Ed Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist award and four for the Bruce Hasegawa Young Investigator award. This was my first year as the Award Committee Chair, so I was not completely clear about the process, but in the future I plan to solicit nominations in a more aggressive manner.

Eight people have been asked to serve on the Committee, one person declined due to the potential conflict of interest. At the end the Committee had four members from the USA, two from Europe and one (plus myself) from Canada. The following people agreed to serve: John Aarsvold, Eric Clarkson, Margaret Daube-Witherspoon, Brian Hutton, Steven Moore, Glenn Wells and Sibylle Ziegler. They reviewed all five nomination packages, including reference letters and publication samples.

Ben Tsui nomination for the Edward J Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award was supported enthusiastically by all reviewers. For the Bruce H. Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award the decision was much more difficult as all four candidates were really excellent. Finally, after two rounds of voting Katia Parodi was selected as the recipient of this award. In summary, this year NMISC Award winners are:

· The 2009 Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award:

Prof. Benjamin M. W. Tsui,

Citation: "For contributions to the development of digital phantoms and quantitative SPECT methods"

Nominator: Eric C. Frey, PhD

· The 2009 Bruce H. Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award:

Dr. Katia Parodi

Citation: "For contributions to PET applications in ion beam radiotherapy"

Nominator: Wolfgang Enghardt, PhD

A flyer with the names, pictures and short bios of the award winners has been prepared and will be placed in the attendees' bags at the registration. The awards will be presented during the first 30 min of the M01 plenary session at 8:00 on Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

This was my first year as a Chair of the Awards Subcommittee and I would like to thank the previous Chair, Dr. Paul Kinahan for all his good advice and support, and all the reviewers for their help during the review process.

Respectfully,

Anna Celler, PhD

Medical Imaging Research Group,

Department of Radiology, University Of British Columbia

e-mail: aceller@physics.ubc.ca

tel: 604-875-5252