Category: Meetings

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AAPM 2005 Day 2

On the schedule for this morning:

7:30 (PDT) – PET Physics and Technology
First topic was basic PET physics and detector technology. Pretty basic stuff. Second topic was reconstruction algorithms, which was interesting and probably deserved it’s own session.

10:00 – President’s Symposium
Very inspirational talk by Dr John Rigden about Einstein’s 1905 papers and what makes them so special and revolutionary.

13:30 – Computed Tomography
Hoo, lots of dry topics that mostly flew over my head.

16:00 – Dual modality imaging
Best session of the day. Learned lots of things to consider and think about for future image fusion work.

18:00 – AAPM awards ceremony and reception
I think I may skip this and go do touristy things down by the Market tonight.
Interesting note: there seem to be more women at this year’s meeting than I remember from past meetings. This is a good thing.

The wireless lounge is a nice area to hang out and get some Net access. The only problem with it is that it’s surrounded by windows and sometimes gets too bright to see a laptop screen very well. Every now and then the connection will drop too, causing page loading errors. Mildly annoying.

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AAPM 2005 Day 1

According to the pilot, this is supposed to be Mount Rainier. At least that’s what he said it was when we were flying past it. The original picture was a little flat, but thanks to The Gimp and a little histogram thresholding (Color Tools/Level), I managed to make it look a lot better.

A view of Mt Rainier from the plane flying into Seattle, WA
Mt Rainier from the plane flying into Seattle, WA

It’s day 1 of the 2005 AAPM Annual meeting. A few minutes ago there were throngs of people waiting to get into the technical exhibit where the vendors have their booths set up. As soon as they announced it was open, everybody rushed in and things got really quiet. Then everyone came back carrying lunch boxes and it got noisy again.

Anyway, today’s mostly filled up with committee meetings for me. No time to check out vendors today. Plenty of time for that tomorrow and the rest of the week though.

Did get to spend a good chunk of time hanging out with my sister and her family yesterday. Went to the Science Fiction Museum with my brother-in-law while my sister took her girls to the Seattle Children’s Museum. The SF museum was pretty cool. Lots of cool SF related artifacts, costumes, books and such. There were props and costumes from all the major SF TV shows and movies there, but one significant show that seemed to be missing was Space: 1999. I suppose they just don’t have anything from the show, or maybe it rotated out of their collection. Seems like a pretty big omission to me though. Still pretty cool place to go visit.

Ok, time to head off to the next committee meeting.

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Heading to Seattle tomorrow

Tomorrow morning it’s an early morning flight heading out to Seattle for the AAPM Annual Meeting.

Looking forward to the trip, both for the opportunity to get back to Seattle, and the chance to see my sister and family again. After the meeting we’ll be heading across the sound to Vancouver to hang out with my brother and his family, and as an added bonus we’re flying the parents in for the weekend. It will be a mini-family reunion and the first time we’ve all been together since our wedding. Should be a good time.

With any luck I’ll be able to find a place to get online with my laptop and blog my impressions of the meeting and my travels.

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Off to Houston tomorrow

Heading off to Houston tomorrow for a site visit to MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Normally site visits aren’t my favourite thing. You fly out either the day before or the same day. You’re trying to evaluate equipment and talk to the people operating the equipment one one side, while the sales rep is talking to you about how great their equipment is on the other side. Lunch, talk with more people, and then fly back later that afternoon.
Tomorrow’s visit will be a little different though, since one of my friends just moved to Houston and doesn’t live too far away. Even though I’ll be getting into Houston in the evening and getting to my hotel late (after dinner with the sales reps), I’m looking forward to getting together and hanging out. Haven’t seen him since my wedding 3 years ago, so it’s going to be a lot of fun getting together and catching up. It’ll be a mini Hooligan reunion!

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AAPM Day 4

The last full day of AAPM, and I’m ready to head back. Unfortunately I have to stay for the Summer School too. My brain’s pretty full now but I’m stuck till Sunday. Guess I’ll have to make some more room in there somewhere.
Last night’s AAPM Night Out at the Carnegie Science Center was a lot of fun. Such a cool place and so many fun things to do! I think it was a good time for everyone who went. I certainly had a good time playing with all the displays, like the lasers and the sound tube or the paper airplane wind tunnel. And the miniature railroad was pretty sweet too. A huge model train set with a whole bunch of tiny detailed movements in the scenery. The Robotics display was pretty cool too. Lots of people tried their hand at making the robot arm shoot free throws. CSC is definitely a fun place to go play.
Lacking any other AAPM sanctioned events, I went out with a couple of friends to catch the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Atlanta Braves. It was the first major league baseball game I had ever been to. An interesting event. Lots of people wandering around, watching the game, eating and drinking beer, and socializing. Pittsburgh lost 1-0 despite managing to get 11 hits versus Atlanta’s 5. Watching the pyroghy (or perogie as they spell it here) race was entertaining. At first I wasn’t quite sure what the heck those weirdo half moon things were, but then I realized they were pyroghys. Strange thing to race I thought, but hey, the crowd seemed to enjoy it. It was a pretty close finish. I think they might have had to go to the photo for the winner.
You know you’re a medical physics geek when you’re looking at the Jumbotron and wondering what the MTF characteristics of it are.