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AAPM 2018 Day 2

Another good day at the AAPM Annual Meeting.  The sessions I went to today weren’t so much about learning new things, but more about refreshing myself on things I should already know about.  All of them were good and well presented.  Some of the session talks got me thinking about some new programming projects to work on coding up some calculator type applications.

One of the things I really enjoy about meetings like this is having the chance to meet up with old colleagues and mentors.  Happened to run into a couple of physicists that I worked with during my residency at Henry Ford Hospital over 20 years ago.  Had a nice lunch with them catching up.

I’m really liking the ePosters set up at the meeting. There are about 10 or so ePoster stations with 4-6 big touch screen monitors at each one.  You can browse all the electronic posters that have been submitted, and during the breaks there are poster presentations where you can talk with the authors about their poster.  There’s also the traditional poster area with actual paper posters tacked up on boards to view.  The majority of posters are therapy related and pretty far out of my field.  There are some good imaging and professional posters though.

After the meeting wrapped up for the day, I went out to play some Ingress and explore some of Nashville’s downtown area.  All the action appears to be on Broadway, where there were lots of bars with live music, restaurants, neon signs, and tons of people walking around.  Quite the happening spot.  Makes King Street in Charleston look positively dull by comparison.  I can see why some people refer to Nashville as “NashVegas”.

Two more days of the meeting left for me before I head back to Charleston on Thursday.

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AAPM 2018 Day 1

It was a a pretty good first day at the AAPM annual meeting.  The Nashville Music City Center is a nice convention center.  It’s large, has lots of rooms both big and small, nicely decorated and being downtown it’s in the middle of everything.  It’s like a small McCormick Place.

Started off the morning sitting in on a couple of task group meetings, mostly just to see what the status was. One of them is pretty close to publishing their report, and another was still working on the report.

A nice thing to see was lots of postings on the job board.  Lots of open positions, especially in diagnostic imaging.

The first lightning talk session (called SNAP orals) I went to was a Rad/Fluoro session where I learned about groups working on triple layer detectors for multi-energy radiographic imaging, and photon counting detectors for fluoroscopy.

The second session was on multi-energy CT.  Multi-energy imaging (outside of nuclear medicine) seems pretty hot these days.  Most of it is being done in CT, but based on what I saw in the previous session, it’s being applied to other modalities too.  It’s definitely an area that I need to learn more about.

A good chunk of the last part of the afternoon was spent wandering around the exhibit area.  Checked in on Radcal and RTI to see what the latest was with their test equipment.  Came across a company called Atirix who have a pretty nifty looking QC management program that might be just what I’m looking for.  Got a nice demo of the product at their booth, and it seems interesting enough that I’ll try to get the people at work interested in it, especially the mammography techs.

It appeared that for the afternoon break in the exhibit hall, there was beer for sale, which I failed to notice until after the break was over.  I was probably busy talking with people about products.

Wrapped the day up with a very enjoyable social put on by the Southeast AAPM chapter.  With so many faces at the meeting, it was a good chance to find some familiar faces at the meeting.

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Carowinds from the air

On the way to the AAPM 2018 Annual Meeting in Nashville, my flight’s landing approach into Charlotte went by Carowinds and gave me this interesting view of the park.

Carowinds from the air
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Stopping to smell the roses

When you’re road-tripping, it’s usually worth taking those little side trips and stops rather than just powering on through to your destination. They’re often the things that memories are made from.

Breakfast stop

After our stay in Portland, OR, we road tripped through Oregon and Washington, and stopped in Post Falls, ID so that we could add another state to our list of Visited States.  With Montana so close, we drove through the mountains along I-90 and stopped at a neat little spot 16 miles past the ID/MT border. Lincoln’s 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar and Gift Shop is a neat little family owned stopping place with a good sized gift shop, restaurant, inn, gas, and camping ground. Pretty much everything you need when looking for a road-trip stop.

Lincoln's 50000 Silver Dollar Bar and Gift Shop
Lincoln’s 50000 Silver Dollar Bar and Gift Shop

We got there early in the morning, browsed around and picked up a couple of state Christmas ornaments for our collection, gazed at the massive number of silver dollars mounted on display in the bar, and had breakfast in the restaurant. It was a very nice and enjoyable stop.

Stop in, browse the gift shop for some souvenirs, check out the 50000+ (and growing) collection of silver dollars on display in the bar area, and grab a bite to eat at the restaurant. Get something with bacon in it.  Make sure to pick up the sheet of paper that tells you the story behind the place.

Scenic views

Somewhere along I-90 in the middle of Washington State is a very nice place to stop where you can get some scenic views of the Columbia River. We stopped for a while to enjoy the scenery on our road trip back to Seattle.

Stop a bit, go for a bit of a walk and stretch your legs, and enjoy the scenery.

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Spruce Goose and other planes

About an hour away from Portland, in McMinnville, OR is the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, home of Howard Hughes’ famous H-4 Flying Boat (aka the Spruce Goose) as well as many other planes, rockets, and aviation related artifacts.

The Spruce Goose (made mostly of birch) is enormous.  It’s probably one of the largest planes you’ll ever see in person.

H-4 Flying Boat (Spruce Goose)
H-4 Flying Boat (Spruce Goose)
Spruce Goose tail section
Spruce Goose tail section
H-4 cockpit high above
Spruce Goose cockpit high above

Its 8 propeller engines are puny compared to the wings they’re mounted on, and the plane’s fuselage. It’s hard to imagine that even 8 engines would have provided enough power to move the H-4, but fly it did.

Four of the H-4's 8 engines
Four of the Spruce Goose’s 8 engines

There are plenty of other planes to see in the museum, both military and civilian.

Biplanes under the wing of the Spruce Goose
Biplanes under the wing of the Spruce Goose

There’s a 21 seat DC-3A (originally belonging to United Air Lines) that you can walk through to get a look at what commercial passenger flight would have been like in the 40s and 50s.

DC-3A
DC-3A
SR-71 Blackbird
SR-71 Blackbird
A-10 Warthog (BRRRRRTTTTT)
A-10 Warthog (BRRRRRTTTTT)

When you need a break from wandering around, airplane seats scattered about the museum provide nice, reasonably comfortable places to sit (and with a good deal more leg room than in an airplane).

The Space Museum takes you through the history of rockets and space exploration, starting with a replica of Goddard’s first liquid fueled rocket, a V-2, a Titan II (used for the Mercury Redstone launches), the Apollo space program, and others. There’s also an IMAX theater (a full-sized one) that shows some pretty good movies. 

There’s a lot to see at the museum, and you can easily spend an entire day and then some exploring all the exhibits both inside and outside.  If that’s not enough for you, go hit the waterpark and slide out of a Boeing 747.

Worth a visit if you’re in the area. Plan on spending at least a half day. Take your time and spend the whole day if you can. Make sure to catch one of the IMAX movies.