Join us for the Annual Conference!

8:45 am - 9:00 am                                                                                         

Welcome and Opening Remarks, Ontario Association of Medical Radiation Sciences (OAMRS)

9:00 am - 10:00 am  

Maximizing efficiency in MRI practices using an automated software

Anna Romanyukha, PhD, Scientific Liaison, Qaelum Nevada

Anna Romanyukha received her Ph.D. degree in medical physics from the Centre of Medical Radiation Physics (UOW, Australia) and her M.Sc. degree in health physics from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). She worked as a post baccalaureate and pre doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute (NIH, Washington DC) on various projects including radiation dose estimation from diagnostic exposures. She now works in Qaelum Nevada, focusing on advanced software tools in patient radiation dose management and quality. Anna will discuss efficiency metrics in MRI, along with the creation and monitoring of improvement trajectories and trends based on identified targets.

1.0 CE Hours

10:00 am - 10:15 am

10:15 am - 11:15 am

 Adapting to the Patient: Innovations in MRI Workflow

R. Jason Stafford, PhD, DABR, Professor, The University of Texas MD, Anderson Cancer Center

R. Jason Stafford, PhD is a board certified and licensed diagnostic physicist that has spent the last two decades working exclusively in MRI.  He is currently a professor with term tenure in the Department of Imaging Physics at MD Anderson Cancer Center and serves as chief for section of MR physics.  He has over one hundred peer reviewed articles with his research focused on MRI-guidance for intervention and therapy as well as clinical applications of MRI in oncology.  He is current chair of the MR Physics subcommittee for the AAPM and actively working with the ACR on MRI Safety. His presentation will cover how artificial intelligence in combination with fast calibration sequences or new hardware are facilitating a more patient adaptive MR environment. 

11:15 am - 12:15 pm

New and Advanced Technologies in MRI

Trevor Andrews, PhD, DABMP(MRI), MRSE(MRSC™), Associate Professor of Radiology, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University at St. Louis

Dr. Andrews received his PhD in Radiological Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt Institute of Imaging Science. He worked for a decade at Philips Healthcare as an MR Clinical Scientist and Lead Developer. Currently, he is Vice Chair of the MPM MR Subcommittee, Chair of the MPM Working Group on MR Testing and Quality Assurance, and several other professional organizations. By the conclusion of Dr. Andrews' presentation, attendees should be able to recognize and describe new methods for improving speed with MRI, improving image quality with MRI, and obtaining quantitative mapping of clinically useful tissue parameters.

12:15 pm - 12:45 pm

Lunch Break

12:45 pm - 1:45 pm

Optimizing the Scan - Tricks of the Trade (Well-known and Otherwise)

Nathan Yanasak, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Radiology and Imaging, Augusta University

Dr. Yanasak earned his PhD at the University of Utah, studying the interior composition of late-stage stars via galactic cosmic ray abundances.  After undergoing a dual-career move with his future wife in 2001, he moved from JPL/NASA to the Medical College of Georgia (now Augusta University) and began work as a scientific image processor and quality control expert for functional MRI research projects.  As a faculty member and an MRI scientist, Dr. Yanasak is the director of radiology resident physics education and the interim director of the MRI research facility. He teaches a variety of classes for undergraduates as well, including computational physics, introduction to scientific programming, and astronomy for the non-major. Dr. Yanasak's talk will cover various methods for improving scan performance and quality.  It will review common tricks as well as some that were learned from various techs and application specialists along the way.  After attending this talk, participants should be able to review protocols at their home location and make optimal changes, discern when a particular technique may or may not be useful according to context, and identify what characteristics need more assistance for a particular scan (signal-to-noise vs. speed, for example, or resolution vs. coverage).

1:45 pm - 2:00 pm

Speeding up MRI: Going Beyond Nyquist

Dr. Michael D. Noseworthy, PhD, PEng, McMaster University, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, Radiology and Nuclear Medicine

Dr. Michael D. Noseworthy, PhD, PEng works as a professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering at McMaster University. He is also the Associate Chair (Research) of Radiology at McMaster and is still Director of Imaging Physics and Engineering at the Imaging Research Centre, St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton. For his presentation, Dr. Noseworthy will aim to help participants understand the basics of compressed sensing and how it differs from SENSE and SMASH, what Multiband (aka “hyperband”) acquisition is, where it can be used and what are the limitations, and how artificial intelligence is being used in image acquisition and reconstruction of MRI data.

Concluding Remarks

Ontario Association of Medical Radiation Sciences (OAMRS)