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Publications
About the AIUM
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 On Board in San Diego | Photo Gallery   With the 2008 annual convention well underway, the AIUM held its yearly Leadership Banquet on the evening of Friday, March 14, honoring a group of hard-working members, bidding an official farewell to outgoing leaders, and welcoming their elected successors. AIUM President, Josh Copel, MD, announced his 3 picks for the 2008 Presidential Recognition Awards which honor outstanding contribution and service to the AIUM and to the ultrasound community over the past year. The 2008 winners, Levon Nazarian, MD, Thomas Shipp, MD, and Jay Smith, MD, were elated to accept this impressive honor. Debbie Lee achieved the 2008 New Investigator Award for her exceptional work investigating the relationship between Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor 2 and in vivo breast cancer. Following the award ceremony and a delicious surf-and-turf dinner, the cheerful event concluded with some familiar tunes and plenty of fancy footwork. Posted by Erin Chrapaty on March 15, 2008
 AIUM Court TV As physicians, imaging technicians, and diagnostic professionals, we all wish for a world where no mistakes are made. Our profession can not find satisfaction in the age-old convention that people make mistakes, because our mistakes make all the difference to people. The 2008 AIUM Annual Convention took this concept beyond the boundaries of conscience, beyond the boundaries of blame. The AIUM took this idea to court! Staging a mock malpractice trial as a highly anticipated categorical course moderated by Lawrence Platt, MD, attendees assumed the position of a jury charged with the task of deliberating a case of fetal abnormality that was not identified until delivery at term. To enhance the realistic nature of the trial, Honorable Judge, Barbara Jones presided while attorneys Susan Loggans, ESQ, and David O'Keefe argued the case in the makeshift courtroom. The facts of the case pitted the plaintiff, a 28-year-old mother of a baby born without a right arm against the defendant team, an obstetrician and sonographer, who failed to recognize the missing extremity during routine examinations. The plaintiff's lawyer argued that the mother would have elected to terminate the pregnancy had she been made aware her baby was going to be born without an arm, while the defense argued that the plaintiff declined to undergo optional diagnostic testing and that the radiologist (who was NOT a part of the trial) was at fault. Two audience members were selected and "sworn in" as official jurors who ultimately found the defendant team not negligent and did not award any damages to the plaintiff. The session concluded with an energetic room-wide discussion, a firm understanding of the legal matters surrounding ultrasound examinations, and one entirely unanimous verdict - Court TV at AIUM must come back next year! View the AIUM Court TV Podcast Posted by Erin Chrapaty on March 15, 2008
Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Gains Momentum At the 2008 AIUM Annual Convention, the musculoskeletal section presented a preconvention course on selected musculoskeletal topics as well as categorical courses on wrist ultrasound, shoulder ultrasound including a hands-on workshop, and a lower-extremity "Just Images" session. At the musculoskeletal section meeting, the members unanimously approved training guidelines for practitioners of musculoskeletal ultrasound. These guidelines lay the groundwork for conversations with other organizations who are stakeholders in musculoskeletal ultrasound. The ultimate goal is to move toward accreditation of practices for performance of musculoskeletal ultrasound. Dale Cyr, Executive Director of ARDMS, also gave a presentation on an ongoing needs-assessment for RDMS credentialing, both for sonographers and physicians worldwide. Posted by Levon Nazarian, MD on March 15, 2008
Medical Student Ultrasound Day Medical Students from the southern California region were invited to participate in an introductory course explaining the applications of ultrasound as well as knobology and how we actually perform the ultrasound exam. In addition, hands-on training with ultrasound specialists is being provided, giving the students the opportunity to look inside their bodies and see kidneys, pancreases, and carotid arteries. It is the hope of the AIUM that these young minds will begin to understand the excitement we all share about ultrasound diagnosis. Posted by Dolores Pretorius, MD on March 15, 2008
Setting Standards Can Be Entertaining For many of you reading this you will have been here a couple of days, but for the members of Output Standards Subcommitee (OSS) and its parent Technical Standards Committee (TSC) who started bright and early Tuesday morning, its been a long week already. It takes some really dedicated people to be in San Diego with this kind of weather to ENJOY and spend the day (and more) in meeting rooms. I sat in on these meetings and it can be entertaining, boisterous, and confrontational but always with a bit of humor that isn't as nerdy as some might think. On a serious note, they do some great work for AIUM including providing their expertise to work on AIUM and international standards involving ultrasound instrumentation. In this global environment, these international standards influence how ultrasound will evolve and it is increasingly important that the standards be developed that will provide safe and effective ultrasound. Experts supported by the AIUM have worked to finalize nine standards in the past few months and have many more in process. The OSS has completed an effort to harmonize national and international standards for the output display (the TI and MI indicators that appear on your ultrasound scanner displays to provide feedback on the acoustic output). The TSC is working on several of the AIUM standards for ultrasound including ones for measuring ultrasound fields and for phantoms used in testing systems. You can also watch for upcoming articles in JUM explaining how several aspects of ultrasound imaging works including harmonic imaging and how the raw data is produced and processed to make the ultrasound images you see everyday. So, for those of you who are here, I hope you are enjoying the meeting, have a little time to enjoy the weather between your visits to the exhibits and sessions and remember the folks that have been hard at work on your behalf since early in the week. Posted by J. Brian Fowlkes, PhD on March 15, 2008
Bioeffects - It's All About Safety The Bioeffects Committee was busy earlier this week. We have finally completed our report on the Safety Conference we held in 2005, and it will appear in the JUM next month. Thanks to everyone else who made this possible, including our leader, Prof. Brian Fowlkes, and especially to staff liaison Vicky Chapman, without whom we'd still be writing. There are many (free!) CME credits available with the various chapters of this report, so we hope it will be both informative and valuable to our MD colleagues. With this task completed, the Bioeffects Committee is now getting back to its usual primary task of reviewing pertinent bioeffects literature for relevance to practicing physicians. You can expect to see several of these appearing in the JUM over the coming year. We've also taken significant steps to completing an update to the Medical Ultrasound Safety pamphlet that is part of the documentation accompanying most new diagnostic machines sold in the US. The first edition was completed in 1994, so this might be considered a bit overdue. We expect to finish the update within the next few months. The membership of the AIUM owes Dr. Marvin Ziskin a big round of applause for his continuing efforts with that document. Posted by Charles Church, PhD on March 15, 2008
Back to Reality As my fellow committee members and AIUM staff know well, the Annual Convention Committee is a never-ending assignment, whether we're reviewing events from meetings past, monitoring the one that's in progress, or thinking ahead to the convention that's still a year away. Amidst the constant stream of e-mails, face-to-face discussions, and conference calls, it's all too easy for us to view the convention as an abstract schedule of events and lose sight of our objective-to make our annual meeting the premiere destination for ultrasound professionals. For me, at least, attending the Annual Convention brings me back to reality, and this year is no exception. It's extremely gratifying to see our committee's work put into practice as people from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds share their passion for ultrasound. Despite the inevitable problems, be they glitches with the computer equipment used for presentations or snakes with impossible-to-find kidneys, the end result is always one that further advances our field. To a large extent, the success of the Annual Convention depends on us responding to your needs. To this end, we on the ACC are extremely interested in receiving constructive comments from attendees. If there's something that you felt we could have done better, something that we omitted, or perhaps something that we should have omitted, please let us know turning in your evaluation booklet or contacting us directly at the AIUM. Posted by Annual Convention Committee Chair Franklin Tessler, MD, CM on March 15, 2008
Pediatric Radiology As a pediatric radiologist with a particular love for ultrasound, I look forward to the AIUM annual meeting. I certainly learn a great deal from my pediatric colleagues. However, to me the real value of the meeting is what I learn from specialists outside my field. The ability to interact with other clinical specialists, basic scientists, sonographers, and industry vendors gives me a broader view of ultrasound, and ideas that can help my patients and practice. Already at this meeting I have gotten new ideas about preventing and treating interventional complications, practical applications of 3D ultrasound in pelvic imaging, evaluation of the critical ICU patient, upcoming methods of tissue characterization, and new technologies to improve workflow. I can't find the concentration of ultrasound expertise and cross-fertilization from other practitioners at any other meeting. It's why I keep coming back year after year, and why I value the AIUM so highly. Posted by Brian Coley, MD on March 14, 2008
Emergency and Critical Care From the Emergency and Critical Care Ultrasound standpoint, this convention started out with a bang. The full day pre-congress course once again drew great interest. A mixture of emergency and critical care ultrasound topics was covered and speakers included prominent critical care ultrasound expert Dr. Alexander Levitov. However, the pre-conference course is not all there is for clinicians interested in point of care ultrasound. There are two categorical courses, hands on procedural course and a scientific session dedicated the point of care ultrasound topics. In addition, the learning opportunities available from expert presentations in musculoskeletal, abdominal, pelvic, vascular and general ultrasound are outstanding. As if this were not enough, two meet the professor sessions on emergency and critical care ultrasound are sold out. One features the internationally renowned father of lung ultrasound Dr. Daniel Lichtenstein from Paris. The meeting has not been all about education and research. There is an increasing sense of one large ultrasound community, interested in improving patient care, coming together to discuss topics and learn from each other. This opportunity to meet ultrasound professionals from different backgrounds and openly discuss topics is rare and unique. As the world of ultrasound expands AIUM continues to be the place to learn about new developments, meet new friends and help that expansion continue. Posted by Michael Blaivas on March 14, 2008
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