Ladies and Gentlemen,

My name is Sue Kaste. I am chairman of the Safety Committee of the Society for Pediatric Radiology and co-program director of the ALARA 2006 Concept in Pediatric Interventional and Fluoroscopic Imaging.

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you, on behalf of the Society, its officers and my co-program director, Keith Strauss, to the third ALARA Conference sponsored by the Society for Pediatric Radiology and this year co-sponsored by the Office of Rare Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services.

This symposium represents an ongoing commitment of the Society for Pediatric Radiology to minimize diagnostic ionizing radiation exposure of children and adolescents while optimizing imaging techniques with the overall goal of improving care of pediatric patients while minimizing possible toxicities. The first symposium, held in 2001, focused on radiation dose reduction in CT. The second focused on DR and CR and was held in 2004. Our current topic will address radiation dose issues and techniques for minimizing radiation exposure of the patient, technologists and physicians using fluoroscopic and interventional techniques. Note that I did not limit ‘physicians–to ‘radiologists.–Several non-radiologic pediatric subspecialties routinely use fluoroscopic techniques: specialists in pediatric interventional cardiology, gastroenterology, genitourinary and orthopedics, to name a few. We are pleased that these subspecialties will be represented here this weekend.

One of the most invigorating aspects of this type of symposium is the direct interaction among multidisciplinary specialists and the meeting participants. Faculty on this year’s program includes medical physicists, pediatric radiologists, interventional cardiologists, specialists in pediatric GI and GU, industry scientists, and radiation researchers. The meeting attendees are similarly diverse and include pediatric radiologists, technologists, orthopedic specialists, and medical physicists. Please avail yourselves of this dynamic venue.

I wish to thank those corporations who have encouraged and supported this conference both financially and with scientific speakers, without which it would not have been held:

  • GE Medical Systems

  • Siemens Medical Systems

  • Philips Medical Systems

I would be remiss if I did not also personally thank the National Institutes of Health for its support as a co-sponsor of this symposium.

International Meeting Managers (IMM) has attended to all of the arrangements. CME is being provided through Continuing Medical Education Resources, a division of IMM.

It is now time to redirect our focus to the task at hand: exploring ways to minimize radiation exposure during fluoroscopic and interventional radiologic procedures in pediatric patients while maintaining and improving image quality and improving care of pediatric patients. As users, we need to understand the design and function limitations and challenges of the equipment. As vendors, the clinical challenges and needs of using the technology—typically designed for adult patients—in children must be understood. As a multidisciplinary team of concerned individuals, we need to interact with one another and share what we learn here with our colleagues. The entire proceedings of this conference will be published as a supplement this fall in Pediatric Radiology. We thank Connie Dunn, Sandra Gaither, and Patricia Vario for administrative assistance in preparing the supplement.

I now have the great pleasure of introducing the co-program director of this meeting, Keith J. Strauss. Keith is the director of Radiology Physics and Engineering at Children’s Hospital Boston and is an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Keith has been a superb collaborator in organizing this meeting and will moderate the first portion of the symposium.

Planning Committee

Sue C. Kaste, D.O.

Co-Director

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Memphis, Tennessee

Keith Strauss, M.Sc., F.A.A.P.M.

Co-Director

Children’s Hospital Boston

Boston, Massachusetts

Bairbre Connolly, M.B., F.F.R.R.C.S.I., F.R.C.P.C.

The Hospital for Sick Children

Toronto, ON, Canada

Steven Don, M.D.

Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology

St. Louis, Missouri

Donald P. Frush, M.D.

Duke University Medical Center

Durham, North Carolina

Thomas L. Slovis, M.D.

Children’s Hospital of Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Faculty

Ben Archer, Ph.D.

Baylor College of Medicine

Houston, Texas

Stephen Balter, Ph.D., F.A.A.P.M., F.A.C.R., F.S.I.R. (hon)

Columbia University Medical Center

New York, New York

Barry Belanger, Ph.D.

GE Healthcare

Waukesha, Wisconsin

Philipp Bernhardt

Siemens AG Medical Solutions

Forchheim, Germany

John T. Boyle, M.D.

The Children’s Hospital

Birmingham, Alabama

David A. Diamond, M.D.

Children’s Hospital Boston

Boston, Massachusetts

Henri Justino, M.D., C.M., F.R.C.P.C., F.A.C.C.

Texas Children’s Hospital

Houston, Texas

Ruth A. Kleinerman, M.P.H.

Radiation Epidemiology Branch, NCI, NIH

Rockville, Maryland

Steven J. Kraus, M.D.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Cincinnati, Ohio

Funding sources

We are indebted to the following corporations for unrestricted grants to The Society for Pediatric Radiology to sponsor this meeting:

  • Philips Medical Solutions

  • GE Healthcare

  • Siemens AG Medical Solutions