Round Table Meetings and Colloquia
Registration for Special Topic Meetings is open to all interested persons.
Participation in the Round Table Colloquia is by invitation only. This general set-up facilitates open and critical discussions. Expenses (travel, lodging, and meals) will not be covered by the Foundation. Commonly no proceedings are published; however, the acting Chairman can decide otherwise.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
Datarrhea and the Great Data Garbage Heap
Sophia Antipolis, France; 27-28 March 2026
The 15th Meeting in the Series
he explosion of data is being countered by an increasing ignorance of how it came into being. Future generations will suffer from a kind of digital amnesia because old formats are no longer readable.
Suppose we are in the year 2040. Google has finally been broken into 50 smaller, independent companies by the anti-trust authorities. Because of the hilarious amount of data doing a Google search does not show any data and publications created before 2020. If you have published a paper in 2014 it’s lost in the cloud — if there still is a cloud. If you haven’t paid your cloud fees your data pool is gone anyway. Or, perhaps somebody has accessed your data, processed them for purposes unknown to you, or altered them. Perhaps your data have been destroyed without your knowledge.
Cloud computing can be an incalculable risk. Of course you can keep your data under your control if you don’t want to hand it over to the big monopolies. However, which hospital, which private radiology office has the capacity and the financial resources to store all image and written data for 30 years? Handing out copies of the images on CDs to the patients is also impractical because CDs are not a reliable storage media.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
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Special Topic Meeting
Basics and Applications
Low-field and ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging
Bordeaux, France; 25-26 November 2025
erforming low-field and ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging requires specific expertise and is still largely unexplored by major equipment manufacturers.
For the last decades this expertise was develoed and is currently held by a few university teams that have chosen to do research in this area. The goal of this meeting is to bring together "low-field expertise" from around the world to promote potential applications of the technique.
The conference is organized by the research group in Bordeaux alternating review lectures of the developments, improvements, challenges, and failures by leading experts in the field and presentations of novel theoretical tools, new ideas, and new applications.
It's Work in Progress. Check this basic overview for further information and references.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
Lower Requirements at Medical Schools
Sophia Antipolis, France; 8-10 August 2025
The 14th Meeting in the Series
major problem: How does one deal with lower requirements at medical schools?
A warning example of this problem was presented in Sweden. A sign of decay has reached the medical schools: At the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, the medical program lowers the requirements. Ellinor Kenne, coordinator of basic science courses taught to medical students at the start of their studies, observed: "We've changed a textbook for the third semester because it contains less text. We are lowering our ambitions a little in terms of the amount of text students have to read. There is no point in aiming too high, because then you lose students … Some people find it difficult to read long texts, they would rather watch recorded lectures instead of reading course books," she remarked on the Vi Lärare website on 19 November 2024.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
'Factory' Produced Papers and their Publishers:
An Outrageous Waste of Public Funds
Sophia Antipolis, France; 1-2 March 2024
The 13th Meeting in the Series
myriad of 'scientific' papers whose contents are truly inessential and pointless were and still are written and published every year.
Hardly anybody is interested in decreasing the quantity and increasing the overall quality of such papers. The problem is not particularly new, has been discussed often, the culprits are known and publicly exposed, and everybody is against it — in theory. However, the financial and university career incentives are too high for everybody involved. 'Scientists' performance is measured by weight and not by outcome.
In scientific circles the reputation of established publishers has suffered dramatically; they are considered untrustworthy and irresponsible, not only by the editors, collaborators and reviewers, but also by authors. Even authors who have published in the past are involved: their articles were published in journals that have been downgraded from a top scientific level to a low-level internet domain.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
Health Care versus Medicine —
Commercializing Medical Imaging
Sophia Antipolis, France; 27-28 May 2023
The 12th Meeting in the Series
he organization and logistics of medical imaging are changing rapidly in some countries. Independent small private practices disappear, Germany and Switzerland being good examples.
The legal introduction of medical care centers (MVZs) in Germany some fifteen years ago has redefined the framework of radiological care. To many patients the radiologists’ offices might look the same, a thriving medical business, but what was formerly owned by one, perhaps two radiologists who had set themselves up, today is part of one of the specialist chains with branch offices in the region or all over the country and beyond.
Medical and increasingly non-medical investors and private equity enterprises have moved into the formerly protected health care market and started taking over doctors’ offices in a number of disciplines: radiology, orthopedics, ophthalmology, neurology, rheumatology, dialysis, dentistry, and even physiotherapy.
Medicine and healthcare are often used as synonyms, equivalent terms for the same activity. However, there is a clear difference between healthcare and medicine: Medicine is performed by physicians, whereas healthcare is the commercialization of medicine, performed by businessmen and bureaucrats. It is a question of semantics if one wants to understand the motives and considerations of the people involved. Medicine has always focused on a patient, an individual. Healthcare is group-oriented for-profit administration and management.
Physicians and dentists warn against outpatient care centers owned by holding companies that often have an unclear financial background. They claim that this commoditization would lead to increased overuse and misuse of care for patients and increase the economic pressure on young doctors and, at the same time, lead to neglect of rural areas and patients with special needs. Quality, integrity and security of medical care suffer.
What can be done?
An accompanying column "New realities in medical imaging" was published earlier on Rinckside.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
The Disaster of Scientific Papers —
Publish to Perish
Sophia Antipolis, France; 29-30 July 2022
The 11th Meeting in the Series
he colloquium's focus was on the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of scientific papers.
The publishing houses count among the main culprits of the decay and decline of scientific publications. Sloppy science is dumped by an ever increasing number of journals and websites, while journalists, politicians, and the general public are, sometimes inadvertently, relying on fraudulent and flawed research to guide major science and health-political decisions, and even veteran researchers have a hard time to ascertain which publications were indisputable.
Apparently little can be done because universities and similar institutions are not interested in fighting the problem as long as they received public funding to support publications of mass publications.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Special Topic Meeting
Magnetic Resonance Imaging —
Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow
Freiburg, Germany; postponed from 2020 to 1-2 July 2022
ome internationally leading scientists in the field presented the development of MRI over the last decades and gave their very personal view of where we are coming from and where we are heading.
The presentations not only covered key areas of research but also took a look behind science, how science is made and how it is changing.
Presentations by young researchers about their development and career choices in academia as well as in industry complemented the lectures.
An accompanying column "Magnetic Resonance Imaging • The 50th anniversary" was published on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.
This two-day meeting was organized and chaired by Jürgen Hennig, Freiburg, Germany.
Jürgen Hennig (chair)
Martin Büchert
Dominik von Elverfeldt
Ute Ludwig
Maxim Zaitsev
Sponsored by EMRF and TRTF.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
Real and Artificial Intelligence in Bio-Medicine
Sophia Antipolis, France; 11-12 March 2022
The 10th Meeting in the Series
he symposium's focus was on the differentiation of human intellect and computer-based brain-power replacement in bio-medical applications, first and foremost in the evaluation of medical imaging data and in image processing.
Two accompanying columns "Looking into the future with blinkers on" and "Are radiologists’ neurons faster and cheaper?" were published on Rinckside.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Round Table Colloquium
As time goes by:
The 50th Anniversary of MR Imaging
Sophia Antipolis, France; 3-4 September 2021
n medical imaging, the times of plain x-rays ended in September 1971 when the world's first axial x-ray computer assisted tomograph (CT or CAT) was installed in England.
In the same month, on 2 September 1971, Paul C. Lauterbur, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, recorded in his laboratory notebook the idea of applying magnetic field gradients in all three dimensions to create nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) images — and had his invention certified; yet, he was never able to patent it because the university opposed it ("The technique has no future").
All NMR experiments before Lauterbur's invention of 1971 had been one-dimensional and lacked spatial information. Nobody could determine exactly where the NMR signal originated within the sample.
Lauterbur's idea changed this. He called his imaging method zeugmatography, combining the Greek words "zeugma" (ζεγμα = the bridge or the yoke that holds two animals together in front of a carriage) and "graphein" (γράφειν= to write, to depict) to describe the joining of chemical and spatial information. This term was later replaced by (N)MR imaging.
This made it possible to create three- and two-dimensional images and metabolic representations of structures of the human body that could not be visualized with other methods. MR imaging replaced previously used invasive examinations and thereby reduced the suffering for many patients. Lauterbur received the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his discovery to create a two-dimensional picture by introducing gradients in the magnetic field.
The symposium will be an exchange of fond — and perhaps some not so pleasant — memories of the first years and the early decades putting into practice a challenging idea. The scientific and research excitement is long gone, so this meeting will be a remembrance of days past.
Further reading: A short history of MR imaging: An Excursion into the History of Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
An accompanying column Magnetic Resonance Imaging • The 50th anniversary was published on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.
This two-day meeting was organized and chaired by Robert N. Muller, Mons, Belgium, and Peter A. Rinck, Sophia-Antipolis, France.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Special Topic Meeting
Magnetic Resonance Imaging —
Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow
Freiburg, Germany; postponed to 1-2 July 2022
Special Topic Meeting
Standing at the Crossroads: 40 Years of MR Contrast Agents
Contrast-Enhanced Biomedical Imaging
Mons, Belgium; 9-10 May 2019
The 16th Meeting in the Series
he thirty anniversary conference on MR contrast agents was devoted to new developments in magnetic resonance contrast agents – and a review of the past 40 years. The two-day meeting turned into an exceptional platform to present and follow-up developments and results in the field since the introduction of such agents.
The conference was organized alternating review lectures of the developments, improvements, challenges, and failures of the last thirty years given by leading experts in the field and presentations of novel theoretical tools, new ideas, and new compounds by young scientists.
The Book of Abstracts of the conference can be downloaded here.
The Opening Lecture "MR imaging: Quo vadis" was published on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.
A Review of the Conference can also be found on Rinckside and Aunt Minnie Europe.
Round Table Colloquium
Ethics in Medicine
The Depersonalization of Medical Imaging
Sophia Antipolis, France;11-12 July 2019
The 9th Meeting in the Series
he symposium's focus was on human beings' right to empathic and personal treatment by physicians, also in the ancillary medical disciplines.
By invitation only.
A summary of the meeting was published in Rinckside as part of the discussion of the Covid crisis.
By invitation only.
Contact the TRTF office for further information.
Spring/summer edition 2025.
TRTF thinks so too.
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