The 65th Annual Meeting and Exhibition of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine AAPM 2023, will take place July 23-27 in Houston, TX. AAPM is partnering with the American College of Radiology (ACR) for an ACR Update and Imaging Educational Course. Image courtesy: Getty Images
July 21, 2023 — The 65th Annual Meeting and Exhibition of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, AAPM 2023, will take place July 23-27 in Houston, TX. Among the large number of sessions, special presentations and events on the program, AAPM is partnering with the American College of Radiology (ACR) for an ACR Update and Imaging Educational Course to be held on Monday, July 24, from 7:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. in Room 351 of the George Brown Convention Center.
Details of the session, as reported by program planners, are summarized here with information from Reston, VA-based ACR, which represents approximately 40,000 radiologists, radiation oncologists, nuclear medicine physicians, and medical physicists.
The update notes that the College has undertaken several initiatives in recent years that benefit medical physicists. The first presentation in this session will provide a brief and high-level update on the activities of the ACR, including key information about the new accreditation database, ACRedit Plus. The session will be presented by Dustin A. Gress, MS, FAAPM, ACR Senior Advisor for Medical Physics, who will moderate the remaining sessions.
Five additional sessions will be presented during the Imaging Educational Course.
1) What constitutes image quality is not a single number, rather, it is many measures from image data depending on desired clinical goals or requirements. A small group of ACR member-volunteers has collected consensus opinions from radiologists and imaging physicists on the relative importance image quality features in CT, in order to set development priorities for quantitating such features.
Invited respondents were targeted by leadership in professional organizations and by subspecialty, including imaging physicists and radiologists specializing in neuro, thoracic, pediatric, cardiovascular, MSK, abdominal, and emergency. This presentation, also presented by Gress, will present the findings of this consensus gathering initiative.
2) Modality QC manuals are an important component of the accreditation programs offered by the ACR. These manuals standardize practice across accredited facilities. The goals of these QC programs include standardization of the quality performance evaluations performed by technologists and medical physicists.
The 1999 QC Manual for ACR’s Stereotactic Breast Biopsy Accreditation Program is incompatible with some modern image-guided breast biopsy techniques, so an all-new QC manual is being developed to accommodate modern clinical equipment and practices. This session will include a presentation on the progress of this new manual. Session presenter is Cleveland Clinic's Katie W. Hulme, MS, FAAPM.
3) ACR staff and member-volunteers are collaborating with other clinical medical physicists to assess the generalizability of estimating CTDI using a helical exposure methodology. This session will include a presentation on the limitations of traditional axial measurements for calculating CTDI and present results on feasibility and generalizability of a helical method of estimating CTDIvol. Session presenter is Izabella Barreto, PhD, University of Florida Division of Medical Physics.
4) The ACR’s MR Safety Committee has drafted a revision of the ACR Manual on MR Safety, which underwent public comment earlier in 2023. The revision of the manual includes new content, reorganization to improve readability and instructional value, additional figures, and “Key Point” boxes to enhance clarity. This session will include a presentation on the updated manual. Session presenter will be R. Jason Starfford, PhD, FAAPM, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.
5) One of the major challenges in medical physics support of modern mammography practice is accommodation of radiologist workstations. In the Fall of 2022, the FDA approved a paradigm shift in the ACR DM QC Manual for handling the multitude of repairs and nuanced maintenance actions that take place in the ongoing operation of these radiologist workstations used in mammography.
The final presentation of this session will describe the updated requirements for radiologist workstations for facilities that adopt the ACR DM QC Manual. This session's presenter is Alliance Medical Physics' Thomas Ruckdeschel, MS, FACR.
In communicating the value of this session, the ACR summary of its AAPM 2023 session noted that attendees participating in this series of presentations will gain six capabilities:
Apply access processes for ACR’s new accreditation web platform
Explain subspecialty radiologists’ differing prioritization of image quality features in CT
Characterize the feasibility and generalizability of estimating CTDI using helical exposures
Describe important new content in and status of ACR’s revised Manual on MR Safety
Understand the status of the new image-guided breast biopsy QC manual
Describe new requirements for radiologist workstations for mammography facilities that adopt the ACR DM QC Manual
More information: www.aapm.org
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April 24, 2024 
