College Park, MD, July 10, 2007 -- The 49th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) will take place July 22-26, 2007 in Minneapolis, MN, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Expected to be one of the most highly attended AAPM meetings to date, the conference will feature over 1,100 scientific papers on subjects at the intersection of medicine and physics. Many of these topics deal with the development of state-of-the-art imaging and therapeutic devices for cancer, and the new techniques that go along with them.

The scientific program will begin on Sunday, July 22 at 9:30 AM and conclude on Thursday, July 26 at 5:30 PM. Scientific abstracts that scored high during the review process were identified as "Reviewer's Choice" selections. More details on these noteworthy presentations can be found on a special meeting webpage (http://www.aapm.org/meetings/07AM/SpecialRecognition.asp).

MEETING HIGHLIGHTS

Meeting highlights include: a new discovery that ultrasound might provide a warning signal for breast cancer; a multiplexing technique, similar to ones used in communications technology, to produce faster computed tomography (CT) images; a new device that may make proton cancer therapy a much more widespread treatment option; and a hybrid magnetic resonance imaging /x-ray machine that may lead to improved cancer treatments.

ABOUT MEDICAL PHYSICISTS

If you have ever had a mammogram, an ultrasound, an x-ray, a CT or a PET scan, chances are reasonable that a medical physicist was working behind the scenes to make sure the imaging procedure was as effective as possible. Medical physicists help to develop new imaging techniques, improve existing ones, and assure the safety of radiation used in medical procedures. They contribute to the development of therapeutic techniques, such as the radiation treatment and
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Contact: Ben Stein
bstein@aip.org
301-209-3091
American Institute of Physics
10-Jul-2007