2003 Medical Workshop
by Ron Manna
The 3rd Annual UIA Medical Meeting was held at the Helmsley Hotel in NYC. The agenda is available on the Website. Several innovative technology programs were described. I am pleased to offer a brief overview of the days highlights.
The first speakers, Drs. Michael and Steven Young gave updates and test results on their developments in torsional mode ultrasonic surgical devices. Dr. Sam Howard detailed the current state of the art in tissue surrogate materials to be used in testing HIFU ablation hardware. Dr. Thomas Shrout spoke about novel piezoceramic materials and sensors being worked on at Penn State. His presentation substituted for one scheduled to be given by Vadivel Devaraju, who was called out of the country unexpectedly. Dr. Bahram Jadidian synopsized his work done with porous piezoceramics that allow the resonant frequency of Langevin sandwich transducers to be reduced while maintaining a shorter axial dimension.
Dr. Christopher Merrit gave an interesting Featured Speaker presentation on the work being done to develop In-vivo Elastography, an exciting use of ultrasound for tissue characterization and diagnosis. Dr. Fleming Forsberg gave one of his entertaining talks on the use of contrast agents in conjunction with ultrasonic imaging of prostate tissue and its implications for HIFU therapy.
These papers were only some of the technical reports given during the day and all presentations were uniformly excellent and well received. The program ended with an instructional mini seminar on protection of IP through the patent process by David Carter, Esq.
The audience came from far and wide, with representatives of Ethicon Corp., Riverside Research Institute, Cornell University, Zevex and Perryman Titanium, among others, being in attendance. Two companies, Blatek Inc. and TRS Technologies took the opportunity to sign up as new members of the UIA. Welcome!!
Overall, the day was a technical and social success. Thanks to all who made the day happen, especially Alan Winder for co-chairing the entire program and Jeff Vaitekunas for soliciting several of the papers and participating in the planning phase.
As a general observation and comment, the continental breakfast, coffee breaks and lunch buffet gave ample time for the attendees to mingle, compare notes and make new contacts. Several synergies were formed at the meeting, with longer-range mutual programs being discussed. The interaction potential between researchers, engineers, hardware development companies and marketers is a major benefit of attending our seminars and I encourage all members and interested parties to take advantage of the opportunity in the future.
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