The sixteenth International Workshop on Breast Imaging was held on 22 – 25 May 2022 in the historical city of Leuven, the capital and largest city in the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. Leuven is the home of Belgium’s largest university and has been a university city since 1425 and the city itself dates from 891.
The Workshop comprised 70 presentations with 48 presentations of original work published in the Proceedings as well as various invited and overview lectures. The topics covered and numbers of presentations within each topic, indicated in brackets, were:
As well as these presentations 22 posters were also on display throughout the Workshop covering:
The range of topics covered indicates that mammographic imaging is a rich source of scientific activity and the application of Artificial Intelligence is now an important topic within the field of breast imaging.
Two members of IRS staff attended the Workshop and found it to be extremely interesting, relevant and enjoyable. They were able to contribute to the scientific discussions through the presentation of two posters, covering work pursued within IRS as part of its support to the UK Breast Screening Programme. The posters presented were concerned with:
Contrast enhanced spectral mammography (CESM) QC testing – initial findings
Data analytics of mammography equipment surveys using python and SQLite database with applications for tomosynthesis and contrast enhanced mammography
The Proceedings of the Workshop have been published as 16th International Workshop on Breast Imaging (IWBI2022), Volume Number 12286 of the Proceedings of SPIE with Editors: Hilde Bosmans; Nicholas Marshall; Chantal Van Ongeval (13 July 2022).
https://spie.org/Publications/Proceedings/Volume/12286?SSO=1
The historical background to the 16th International Workshop spans a period of over 40 years with strong links to the Symposium Mammographicum (SM) conferences established in the UK in 1979. The aim of the Symposium was to provide a scientific and clinical forum that could support the improvement in the quality of mammographic imaging including techniques, radiation dose and image quality. The first scientific conference and technical exhibition took place at University College London 1980, which was attended by one of the present authors. The most recent SM was held in Harrogate in 2021 and the next scheduled for 2023 in Glasgow.
With the development of digital mammography in the early 1990’s an independent International Workshop on Digital Mammography (IWDM) was held in York immediately preceding the 1994 SM with David Dance playing a leading role in its organisation. At the 1994 meeting Martin Yaffe from Toronto gave the first lecture on digital mammography at an SM conference. Incidentally Martin was one of the keynote speakers at the recent 16th International Workshop.
Following the 12th International Workshop on Digital Mammography held in Gifu City, Japan, the 13th meeting held in Malmo, Sweden was renamed as the 13th International Workshop on Breast Imaging since digital imaging was now standard practice for mammography. Consequently, in the intervening period imaging of the breast for screening of asymptomatic as well as the diagnosis of symptomatic patients has continued to develop clinically and technologically and plays a major role in cancer care. Meetings such as the International Workshop provide a vital forum where those working in this important field can come together in order to exchange information and discuss new developments, which seem set to continue for some considerable time to come.
https://sympmamm.org.uk/about/history/
Kirsty Sherwin
Tim Lloyd
Dr Mike Moores
August 2022