ANNUAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE ROYAL BELGIAN SOCIETY OF RADIOLOGY (RBRS), Brussels, 20.11.2010

Professor John Griffiths, MD, PhD, Co-Director of imaging at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute, Honorary Professor of Magnetic Resonance at Cambridge University. He is a long standing researcher in MR of cancer, in both clinical and pre-clinical research. This particular way of doing will be of increasing importance in the future of oncologic imaging, participating in the translational trend of the oncologic research. The other foreign speaker to which we will present Honorary Member ship is not a radiologist but a physicist, Tom Scheenen, MSc, PhD, from the University of Nijmegen, Radboud University Medical Centre. He is a specialist in MR spectroscopy of prostate cancer. His dynamism and the close multidisciplinary integration of the Nijmegen team illustrate another unavoidable trend in oncologic imaging, which is the necessity of a close association of physicians, basic scientists and engineers to achieve efficient and reliable results in tumour imaging. I thank the industrial sponsors who helped us to organize this Annual Symposium. Their support is greatly appreciated. I hope each of you will enjoy the stimulating and sometimes unusual topics of this Symposium. Have a pleasant Saturday morning,

particular way of doing will be of increasing importance in the future of oncologic imaging, participating in the translational trend of the oncologic research.
The other foreign speaker to which we will present Honorary Member ship is not a radiologist but a physicist, Tom Scheenen, MSc, PhD, from the University of Nijmegen, Radboud University Medical Centre.He is a specialist in MR spectroscopy of prostate cancer.His dynamism and the close multidisciplinary integration of the Nijmegen team illustrate another unavoidable trend in oncologic imaging, which is the necessity of a close association of physicians, basic scientists and engineers to achieve efficient and reliable results in tumour imaging.
I thank the industrial sponsors who helped us to organize this Annual Symposium.Other distinguished speakers will present you multiple facets of the new methods and tools that we as radiologists could have to operate in the future to fulfil the needs of modern oncology.My colleague of the Nuclear Medicine department at Jules Bordet Institute, Patrick Flamen, will close the session with the important point of the needed cooperation between radiologists and nuclear medicine specialists.

ANNUAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE ROYAL BELGIAN SOCIETY OF RADIOLOGY (RBRS), Brussels, 20.11.2010
Dear Colleagues, I am happy to welcome you to this session of the Annual Symposium of the RBRS devoted to « New Trends in Oncological Imaging ».There are two underlying statements in this title: first a specificity of oncologic imaging that goes beyond organ specificity and second a clear evolution in the expectations from the imaging techniques on part of the oncologists, which is following a paradigm change in cancer treatment.
Response assessment in cancer treatment has become a major need and challenge, at a time when oncologists are facing a multitude of new clinical research protocols.
The two scientists to which we present today the honorary membership of the RBRS are not of the same generation nor coming from the same Honorary Membership Nominee of the RBRS in 2010 branch of science but I felt important to underline the essential contribution of scientists from basic and applied sciences in our radiological practice today particularly in oncology .More than ever, we have to work in multidisciplinary teams to address the new challenges of imaging.
I believe that all of us should give a big ovation to Marc's outstanding performance.
Dear colleagues, I do hope that you will grant me your support and cooperation during the next twelve months.Indeed, as you are well aware of, the economic environment is becoming increasingly rougher, and this, coupled with the fusion of the RBSR and the National Union of Radiologists, represents an important challenge to face.
We all have to make sure that everybody's interests shall be maintained.
The bare fact that our field is subjected to more and more financial Mr President, dear colleagues, I would like to start by presenting my sincere congratulations to Marc and the organizers for the excellent scientific level and organization of this symposium.
I feel highly honored to have been elected as Chairperson of the Royal Belgium Society of Radiology and to take over from Marc.
Dear Marc, you have set the level of this symposium and your work as President of the RBRS so high that it will be a major challenge for me to achieve such an excellence the forthcoming year.
Tom Scheenen is a physicist and is presently the MR physicist of the Radiology Department of the Radboud University Medical Center at Nijmegen in the Netherlands.He defended his PhD thesis ten years ago on NMR imaging of water motion in plants.
Since then he is working full time on advanced MR application in medicine en was the coordinator of a multicentric study of MR spectroscopic imaging of the prostate, in which I had the pleasure to participate.He is now principal investigator of another multicentre study on MR multiparametric analysis of prostate cancer for which he was awarded an European starting grant from the European Research Council.Tom is a physicist but has a clear vision of what is necessary for the patients and physicians.He shares his office with an interventional radiologist and is part of a truly multidisciplinary team.He has 39 scientific publications, is assistant-editor of Investigative Radiology, member of the board of the Erwin Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Essen, Germany where he is involved in 7 Tesla research work.
pressure nevertheless constitutes an opportunity to position us and to make use of the funds in the most effective manner.
We all experienced during the last years severe cuts in the reimbursement of diagnostic and therapeutic medical imaging.
It is up to us to provide the health care system with enough data to decrease these cuts, as well as to introduce new diagnostic approaches and fields that will benefit to the patients and to the health care system.
Moreover, I would like to insist on the importance of reinforcing the cooperation between our universities and all the other referring hospitals, in order to keep the Belgium diagnostic imaging at its high care and scientific level.
I strongly believe that it can only be accomplished by a team effort, and I would again like to use this opportunity to thank the board for the confidence conceded to my person by electing me.
I ensure you that I will work to the best of my abilities to avoid disappointing you.I impatiently look forward to working with you all.