The European Congress of Radiology (ECR), the annual meeting of the European Society of Radiology (ESR) was held 6–10 March, Vienna, Austria.
Radiation protection was a key theme of the congress as the ESR launched the EuroSafe Imaging campaign, an initiative promoting appropriateness in medical imaging, maintaining doses within diagnostic reference levels and emphasising the as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) principle.
“This congress for me is very specific because it’s the first time that the ECR is connected to a political action (…) This campaign is a good summary of all our policy related to radiation protection,” said ESR past-president professor Guy Frija, Paris, France.
A dedicated website, www.eurosafeimaging.org, was recently launched. Many activities will follow in 2014, including the development of training material and lists of criteria for safe radiological examinations, and the organisation of dedicated radiation protection sessions during subspecialty and national societies’ events. Individuals and organisations are actively encouraged to become ‘Friends of EuroSafe Imaging’ by signing up with the campaign online.
With over 1,800 lectures on every aspect of medical imaging, the scientific programme delved into the latest works of international experts and tackled the current hot issues in radiology. A total of 329 presentations focused on oncologic imaging, 228 on abdominal and gastrointestinal imaging, and many more on many other subspecialties in radiology, as well as physics, nuclear medicine and dedicated lectures for radiographers.
The multimedia classroom, in which radiologists could directly train their peers on several workstations in CT coronary angiography, CT colonography, and CT imaging in oncology and emergency, was also launched at the congress.
The interactive sessions all proved very popular, and the session ‘Pitfalls in abdominal imaging’ attracted almost 2,000 delegates, while 1,500 participants attended the Image Interpretation Quiz (IIQ).
Social media
ECR Live, a service that allows people to watch lectures online from all over the world, broadcast more than 1,500 lectures in real time and attracted more than 5,500 viewers. Over 4,000 messages, which were posted on Facebook and Twitter and the built-in chat function, were displayed on the Social Media Wall over just five days, confirming the ECR’s leading position in the use of social media at medical congresses.
“ECR Live is now in perfect shape. We are covering most of the sessions and, what is most important is that it will now be possible for any member of the society to go through a session from home during and after the congress. It is a tremendous treasure of knowledge for future radiologists, so I think that the ECR is again setting another standard for the organisation of medical congresses,” said ECR 2014 president, professor Valentin Sinitsyn.
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