At the time of writing this part of newsletter, we are wrapping up the 2024 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD in Tampa, FL which is being held from October 26^th to November 2^nd. The Medical Imaging Conference (MIC) for which NMISC has primary responsibilities was run smoothly with many interesting presentations organized by two highly dedicated program chairs, Georges El Fakhri and Kira Grogg. We also ran four MIC-focused short courses with topics on PET kinetic modeling and parametric imaging, medical image processing with AI, physics and instrumentation of hybrid imaging devices, and dosimetry in radiopharmaceutical therapy. Esteemed leaders in each topic led these courses with many interested learners in each course.

Following our tradition, MIC held plenary sessions in which three NMISC awards were made. For this year, the IEEE Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award, the award for an exceptional career achievement went to Paul Lecoq of Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging (i3M) and CERN; the IEEE Freek J. Beekman Medical Imaging Technical Achievement Award, our mid-career award, went to Antonio Gonzalez of Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging (i3M), which made i3M as an institution that boasts two NMISC awardees in the same year; and finally the IEEE Bruce H. Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award, our early achievement award went to Bo Zhou of Northwestern University. An interesting thing to note about the Hasegawa award this year is that this is the first time that a former Hasegawa award winner (Chi Liu of Yale University) nominated a successful Hasegawa award winner.

We had an annual meeting of NMISC during the conference and provided many updates of our activities including updates of future MICs. 2025 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD will be held in Yokohama, Japan, and the MIC program will be organized by Taiga Yamaya of QST and Jae Sung Lee of Seoul National University. Both are leaders in the MIC community. 2026 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD will be held in Granada, Spain, and the MIC program will be organized by Vesna Sossi of University of British Columbia and Roger Fulton of University of Sydney, seasoned and highly respected leaders in our field.

Before the annual meeting, we also held our mid-year meeting on June 25^th over Zoom. This online Zoom meeting was a great opportunity to report progresses of NMISC activities that set a good tone of how to make efforts to improve the upcoming and future MIC meetings, particularly the most upcoming (i.e., 2024) MIC meeting. One notable action from this mid-year meeting was revival of our balanced representation subcommittee which was on a little bit of hiatus for a while. As a result, at the annual meeting in Tampa, we now have a subcommittee chair, Magdalena Rafecas of University of Lübeck leading the discussions and defining action plans.

With the tone set before the annual meeting, during our annual meeting we had a series of very important discussions. A few notable items to report are: reconfirmation of balanced representation in conference organizing committees, joint efforts with RISC for re-thinking of conference structure and format with the primary aim of program coordination between NSS, MIC, and RTSD, a clear transition plan for our new NMISC secretary from our outgoing secretary, Nicolas Karakatsanis of Cornell University to Esther Ciarrocchi of University of Pisa, our incoming secretary. For Esther, it is also a great way to extend her service to NMISC for at least two more years since 2024 is her last year of NMISC member-at-large term. NMISC is due for recommending a new Joint Oversight Subcommittee (JOS) member, and anticipates the election result of new members-at-large which will conclude in two weeks. Through JOS activities, the 2028 site selection process is well on its way.

NMISC, in partnership with RISC, welcomes the two Member-to-Leader Initiative interns, Esther Ciarrochi of University of Pisa, and Ezzat Elmoujarkach of University of Lübeck. Esther being already part of future leadership of NMISC as secretary, I am certain that her observation of RISC activities will help understand our combined efforts for the conference that we are overseeing together. As a final note of my chair’s report during the annual meeting, I strongly encouraged all members of NMISC to be part of at least one subcommittee so that all have opportunities to make contributions to the core mission of NMISC, the oversight of MIC.

Finally, I would like to share that NMISC is once again playing a major role to organize another IEEE NPSS School with focus on medical imaging in 2025. This time, we are discussing a plan of holding a school in Vietnam that is a great combination of the schools we helped in Bangkok in 2023 and in Jakarta in 2024. I really look forward to seeing this discussion move to a solid planning phase soon.

More information on NMISC activities is available at https://ieee-npss.org/technical-committees/nuclear-medical-and-imaging-sciences/

Youngho Seo, NMISC Chair, can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].