President’s report.

18^th INTERNATIONAL VETERINARY RADIOLOGY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE

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The 18^th IVRA Conference was held in conjunction with the ACVR annual meeting in Fort Worth, near Dallas, 15^th-19^th October 2018. This is normally a very large conference held over only three days, but was lengthened to five days to accommodate the usual IVRA schedule. It was held in the Omni Fort Worth Hotel, an excellent but expensive venue. The meeting was organized by the programme committee chaired by Allison Zwingenberger (chair) with the assistance of Libby Dietrich the ACVR administrator and the full committee.

The IVRA Board Meeting and CPD sessions were held on the day before the conference. The meeting was attended by 540 delegates, mostly from North America, as expected. Twenty-four countries were represented, USA (434), Canada (26) and South Korea (15), United Kingdom (12), Brazil (11) and Australia (6) making up the biggest contingencies. Thanks to all the sponsors who helped to make the congress a success. The major sponsors were:

Platinum sponsor:
Gold sponsors:

IVRA Business matters

Download IVRA General-Meeting-Minutes 2018 PDF file

The IVRA membership number in October 2018 was 1474 although some duplication exists.

The new Constitution and Policies and Procedures document were approved at the meeting.

Dr McAllister has put a tremendous amount of work into revising the Constitution and Policies and Procedures over the last 6 years with the help of Drs Lord and Biery as well as the executive and were thanked for all of their efforts by the president.

An Open Education Resources committee was proposed and accepted. The committee will be tasked to make use of digital, internet and web based technology to make educational imaging information (CPD programs, quizzes etc.) available to developing countries. The committee to consist of at least 2 directors and another 4 co-opted IVRA members.

Due to marked increasing costs of our website being hosted by the ACVR the executive decided to move to having our own website. The Board investigated options and costs for a new website, and after extensive investigation Dr Kirberger has contracted Alan Perry from Famous Websites in the UK (also handles the EVDI and ECVIM websites) to design and maintain the website.

Costs will be about US$ 1000 for development and US$ 800 for annual maintenance as well as website hosting and annual domain registrations. The new website will be functional by December 2018 and a Web Liaison Officer will be sought by the president to liaise with the webmaster. The domain name is www.IVRAImaging.org with www.IVRAImaging.net and www.IVRAImaging.com also registered.

The following new directors were elected:

Brazil Felipe Abreu
Germany Kerstin von Pückler
Japan Taka Miyabayashi
North America Silke Hecht
Southern Africa Ann Carstens
Director at large Hock Gan Heng

The new executive members elected for 2019-2021 are:

President Dr Jungee Yoon
Vice President Dr Federica Rossi
Past President Dr Robert Kirberger
Secretary Dr Nola Lester
Treasurer Dr Matt Winter

Awards

The J Kevin Kealy award for substantial published scientific contributions to veterinary imaging was awarded to Professor Daniel Feeney from the University of Minnesota. The award was accepted on his behalf by Dr Patricia Walter a work colleague.

Two Mike Bernstein Travel Fellowships were awarded to veterinarians with a special interest in veterinary radiology to support attendance and presentation of a paper. These winners came from countries with little previous contact with others in veterinary radiology. It is reasoned that those awarded a Fellowship will take the knowledge gained from the IVRA Meeting and use it to foster the development of radiology in their own country. There were 8 applicants for the award and the recipients were Dr Kuan-Sheng Chen from Taiwan and Dr Sakar Palecha from India. Their attendance at the meeting was generously supported by IDEXX,

One Educational Scholarships was awarded to provide a veterinarian who does not have access to specialty training in Clinical Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging at their own institution with the opportunity of studying for a period of time in a clinical veterinary radiology training program. The IVRA expects that the knowledge and experience gained by the successful applicant will be applied at the applicant’s faculty and used to improve its standards of clinical veterinary radiology. The scholarship was awarded to Dr. Lau Seng Fong from the University of Putra Malaysia (supervisor Prof Martin Sullivan of the University of Glasgow). Dr Seng Fong was generously supported by ANTECH.

The W. Harker Rhodes Awards for the best oral and poster presentation by a non-ACVR trainee or junior colleague, were awarded at the Gala Dinner to the Travel Fellow Kuan-Sheng Chen (Taiwan) for his paper ‘Clinical correlation between ultrasonographic renal dimensional indices and renal function in feline chronic renal disease’ and Jin Woo Jung from South Korea for his poster ‘Computed Tomography for evaluation of mass lesions originating from the reproductive system of bitches.’

Meritorious service awards were presented to:
Darryl Biery, for 39 years of exemplary and dedicated service to IVRA and
F Curtis Davis Jr J.D. for 20 years of legal service and advice to the IVRA

There were two excellent bids to host the 2021 meeting by Thailand and Ireland. The fact that the congress has not been in Europe for a while swung the voting in favour of Ireland, where Kevin Kealy started the organization 50 years ago. The 19^th IVRA meeting will thus be held in Dublin, Ireland, on 22^nd-27^th August, and planning is already well advanced. Put the date in your diaries now!

General conference feedback

Scientific sessions were held every day, with half-day outings on the Tuesday and Thursday. Altogether there were eight keynote lectures, 22 invited speakers, 62 oral abstract and 29 poster presentations. All but one of the keynote and invited speakers were from North America; however the flag was flown for the rest of the world by Andrew Parry from the UK, who gave an excellent invited lecture about congenital portosystemic shunts. Business meetings, panel discussions and an entertaining image interpretation session were also part of the programme. The IVRA AGM was held on Friday afternoon, with a good attendance.

As well as several evening receptions thanks to corporate sponsorship, two half-day trips formed the social programme. The first was to the amazing Fort Worth Stockyards, a huge site on the edge of the city which in the heyday of ranching was an enormous sale yard for livestock and which is now carefully preserved, with numerous retail outlets and authentic eateries. Unfortunately this day was wet and cold, but the twice-daily ‘cattle stampede’ still took place down the main street: about 15 beautiful Texan Longhorn cattle ambled sedately along, herded by cowboys and cowgirls on horses. This was followed by an indoor barbecue with entertainment and line-dancing, which was great fun. The second trip, to Dallas, gave a choice between the Kennedy experience (John F. Kennedy was assassinated here) and the museum district, which included the excellent Dallas Museum of Art. Both excursions were greatly enjoyed by the delegates, especially as the rain had stopped (before starting again next day!).

The conference finished with the Gala Dinner and awards on Friday night, held at the hotel. The home crowd (somewhat depleted as many left on Wednesday evening) very much warmed to the traditional national singing which is always a highlight of IVRA meetings and which was hosted, as always, by the inimitable Jens Arnbjerg.