Message from the President
Dear friends and colleagues
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year! I hope you managed to get a break over the festive period and enjoy some quality time with your friends and families.
Many thanks to those who joined us for the BSNR Christmas lecture by Prof Tim Griffiths. If you were not able to join the live session, a link for the recording is available on the BSNR website. If you have any ideas for next year’s Christmas lecture and/or lecturer (you can never plan too far ahead!) please do let me know.
Hopefully many of you have already filled in the BSNR survey, the link for which was sent out recently. If you have not got round to it yet, please spare a few minutes to complete this. I know I sound like a broken record, but the importance of hearing your comments and suggestions cannot be over-emphasized.
I am sure, like me, you are proud of the BSNR for being an open and welcoming place, irrespective of individual backgrounds. However, there can be no room for complacency. I am sure you would agree that our commitment to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in our Society should be one that is serious and consistent. To that end, we are seeking applications from members for the role of EDI representative, who will be a voting member of the Executive Committee. The job description and call for applications will go out shortly. If you are interested and/or have any query or comment about this role, please feel free to contact me.
Many of you will have attended the BSNR Grand Rounds over the last couple of years with presentations from leading centres in UK, Europe, USA and beyond. There have also been a number of other excellent collaborations with societies around the world, led by our highly active Training and Education Subcommittee. Given these developments, we would like to appoint a Global Representative to promote collaboration with international societies and increase BSNR’s profile globally. The call for applications for this role will go out in the next few weeks, please do look out for it.
So, there is lots happening in our Society, but given how busy January is for everyone, I will stop here for now.
Till the next time, wishing you all the very best.
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
bsnr.pres@gmail.com
January 2023
BSNR Christmas lecture 2022
Thursday 15th December, 6pm
‘The mind’s ear: speech, music and the brain’
Professor Tim Griffiths
Dear friends and colleagues,
As the days get shorter and the mercury starts to drop, there must be one thing in everybody’s mind – Christmas is coming. I am therefore delighted to announce that this year
we have a BSNR Christmas lecture that is in tune with the mood of the festive season. The 2022 Christmas lecture will be delivered by Prof. Tim Griffiths, Professor of Cognitive
Neurology in Newcastle University and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow. He is a Fellow of Academy of Medical Sciences and an Adjunct Chair in University of Iowa. Prof Griffiths
graduated from University of Oxford and from where he also holds a DM in Neurology. He is an international authority on auditory cognition including musical perception. He has made
many key contributions to both fundamental and applied neuroscience including identification of specific pitch and pitch-sequence systems in auditory cortex using functional imaging.
Prof Griffiths will talk about how the brain constructs a picture of the acoustic world to allow us to understand natural scenes containing speech and music. He will also consider
how this process might go wrong in brain disorders and be relevant to established links between hearing loss and dementia.
Therefore, please put this date in your diaries and join us online on Thursday 15th December at 6pm to enjoy this special BSNR event. You can register for the event here.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
October 2022
Message from the President
Dear friends and colleagues,
It was wonderful to see many of you recently in Liverpool at our Annual Scientific Meeting.
Despite many challenges, which included a rail strike the day before the meeting, Sam Mills
and her team put together a superb programme both in terms of organisation and scientific
content. For many, the highlight of the meeting might have been the talk on pandemics and
infectious diseases by the “Running Mad” Professor Tom Solomon, but what about the run-
through of half a century of evolution of interventional neuroradiology by the Brian Kendall
lecturer Prof Alex Berenstein! The other invited talks and scientific papers were also of very
high quality. This year saw the inaugural parallel Neuroradiographers’ conference, which by
initial feedback, has also been a great success. My thanks to Shubh Biswas for organising the
two-day trainee meeting before the ASM, which continues to go from strength to strength.
So, three cheers to the Liverpool team for making all this happen!
While the ASM remains the highlight of our calendar, many other important activities are
happening throughout the year, thanks to the dedication and hard work of our colleagues in
the various subcommittees and groups. Several of these initiatives have started relatively
recently following a survey done a couple of years ago. This highly successful listening
exercise, conceived and undertaken by my predecessor, Danny Birchall, provided numerous
excellent comments and ideas, and became a springboard to many of the innovations that
followed. As I start my two-year term as President, I would like to ask many of the same
questions to you again, so that we can gauge how far we have come and how we can make
our society even more successful in the future. Harriet Joy, our Hon. Secretary, will be
sending out the link to the survey – please look out for it and make your voice heard. Every
opinion counts!
Last but not least, Christmas is only 7 weeks away and I am delighted to say that we have an
excellent BSNR Christmas lecture lined up for you. The lecture titled ‘The mind’s ear:
speech, music and the brain’ will be given online by Professor Tim Griffiths, Professor of
Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University on Thursday 15th December at 6pm. I am sure
it will be a fascinating listen, so please tune in.
Till the next update – Cheerio!
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
bsnr.pres@gmail.com
November 2022
We are delighted to announce the winners for the 2022 Prof Iain Wilkinson Essay Prize addressing the question ‘Will artificial intelligence support or replace neuroradiologists 10 years from now?’
The 2022 winner is Syed Muzaffar Abbas, final year medical student at the University of Southampton. Syed receives the £250 Essay Prize. The judges were highly complimentary of Syed’s thoroughly researched and well written essay. Read it here.
The Judges also highly commended the essay by Divine Mwawasi, 2nd year medical student at St Andrew’s who receives the £150 Runner-Up prize. Read it here.
The essay prize is awarded in honour of Prof Iain Wilkinson, Professor of Magnetic Resonance Physics at the University of Sheffield who died in 2020. Prof Wilkinson was a leading figure in UK clinical brain imaging research and a long-standing friend of the British Society of Neuroradiologists. The 2023 Essay Prize competition will be advertised in spring 2023 here.
We are very pleased to announce our next Educational Module will be Neurovascular in conjunction with UKNG, and will cover everything the neuroradiologist needs to know about imaging around neurointerventional procedures.
If you are already registered to the educational programme, your registration will continue into this module. If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so here: https://bsnr.org.uk/education/modules/.
BSNR Educational Fellow – Applications Open!
Application Deadline EXTENDED: 8th June 2022
Given the rapid expansion of the BSNR educational output, including the Educational Programme, Grand Rounds, On-Call Course, and Trainee Days, this is an exciting opportunity for an ST3+ radiology trainee interested in neuroradiology and education to help ensure the educational material is as useful and accessible as possible. You will work closely with the Training and Education Subcommittee to develop the Curriculum Support Tool, design future educational initiatives, and liaise with the junior representatives to ensure content is current and relevant. Please see the BSNR Education Fellow job description for more details and how to apply. If you have any questions or want to discuss informally, please email bsnrtesc@gmail.com.
We were very pleased to present the first joint webinar with the British Society of Skeletal Radiologists last weekend, with hundreds of attendees tuning in live to hear speakers from both societies. The full webinar recording is available to watch here.
Applications for the BSNR 2022 Visiting Scholarships – funding of up to £2000 to cover expenses for BSNR members (consultants and trainees) to visit another centre to gain experience not available locally.
For more details and to apply, see the Visiting Scholarships page.
Deadline 13th May 2022.
BSNR New Year Update 2022
I hope you had a good Christmas and that you’re thriving in this New Year.
There’s been a lot of progress within the BSNR over the last few months, and below are our Top Ten highlights.
Annual Scientific Meeting – London, November 2021. Tarek Yousry and colleagues organised and ran a fabulous meeting at the Royal College of Physicians with the gala dinner at the Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel in Russell Square. There was a record attendance, with by far the largest number of registrants (around 250 people) that we have ever had. There was a stellar cast of international Neuroradiology speakers, including Professors Tom Naidich, Anne Osborn, Timo Krings and Katrin Amunts, and an absorbing academic programme was provided by a wide range of home-grown talent from the Home Countries. Just as impressive to me was the vibrancy and youthful energy that suffused the whole event. The 2022 event will be taking place in Liverpool, to be followed by Edinburgh in 2023 and Bristol in 2024.
Educational Programme. Ian Craven and colleagues on the Training and Education Subcommittee have continued to develop and present the weekly educational programme. This systematically covers the entire Neuroradiology landscape over the course of two years, and is of a standard which rivals that of established international training programmes. It relies on support from a huge range of teachers, with approximately 40 Consultants from around the country providing the lectures. There have been many thousands of downloads of the sessions, accessed from countries in every continent. There have also been other exciting developments, including the introduction of live and interactive film-viewing teaching sessions, available throughout the UK and delivered by some of our most outstanding trainers. 2022 will also see the start of a national programme delivering on call training to ST1 to ST3 trainees: this is seen as a key part of our drive to be accessible, visible and supportive to trainees in their earlier years.
Grand Round Series. Priya Bhatnagar and Shubh Biswas have continued to host and develop the successful Grand Round Series. Not only has this been a great opportunity for UK centres to showcase their own trainees and cases, but it continues to be a key part of the BSNR’s drive to engage internationally. Last week, we were fortunate to have several speakers from Hong Kong presenting to us: this opportunity was highly prized by our friends in HK, and is a great demonstration of the powerful and constructive effect that this engagement can have. We have also had recent presentations from South Africa, Canada, Singapore, Kuwait, Netherlands, India and Brazil. The ESNR is keen to develop a collaborative relationship in the further development of this forum.
Trainer of the Year. This year’s ASM saw the inaugural Trainer of the Year award presented. Trainers were proposed from around the country, with supportive testimonies, and a short-list was considered by a committee from within the Executive and TESC. There were two winners this year, Jo Jarosz (King’s) and Adam Thomas (Nottingham). Jo collected his award in person at the ASM, and received a very well deserved ovation.
British Paediatric Neuroradiology Group. Kish Mankad has done a tremendous job in establishing the BPNG, and is encouraging an inclusive approach. The BPNG has drawn up the Paediatric Module for the TESC’s Educational Programme, working with Lal Carlton-Jones, and has drafts for imaging protocols close to finalisation. The BPNG is engaging very effectively with key international groups, and is representing the BSNR-BPNG very well in the process.
International engagement. International engagement efforts have continued to bear fruit. The BSNR has been formally asked to provide a proportion of the educational programme at the Australia and New Zealand ASM in March, and is providing a number of high class speakers. We closely supported Timo Krings and colleagues in the provision of the Canadian Neuroradiology Course in November 2021. The BSNR is also central to a major collaborative effort between Dubai / UAE and the Royal College of Radiologists in the organisation of a major global Radiological Congress taking place in Dubai in September of this year. Plans are also in place for a collaborative effort with Singapore, Hong Kong and the Asian-Oceania Society of Neuroradiology. Continued engagement will take place through the ongoing Grand Round Series also.
Evening lectures. The Christmas Lecture, given by Professor Sahar Saleem on “What it’s like to be Radiologist to the Pharaohs” was a tour de force. We were fortunate to have the world’s first sight of the digital unwrapping of a royal mummy, two days before the world media took the story up. We are really fortunate to have one of the world’s most famous Neuroradiologists talking to us in the Spring Lecture: Frank Gaillard (Melbourne), the founder of Radiopaedia, has agreed to talk with us – this will be a great opportunity for us to engage and talk with one of the most inspirational and innovative thinkers in our field. The talk will be on Thursday 24th March at 8 pm (so that it’s not too early in the morning for Frank!) We will send out flyers beforehand, but please make note of the date.
Radiographers Forum. We have established a BSNR Forum for Neuroradiographers. The drive for this comes from suggestions made in the BSNR Survey of 2020, and this dovetails with Liverpool’s ASM plans, which include parallel sessions for our Neuroradiography colleagues. There has been an excellent response, with primarily senior radiographers, often with superintendent or advanced practitioner roles, attending. Please communicate this to your Neuroradiography colleagues, as the message may not have got through effectively everywhere. The Forum is an important step to opening up the Society, and to increasing its day-to-day relevance.
Royal College of Radiologists. We are building closer relations with the Royal College. This is an important collaboration, and I hope that the strengths and dynamism that exist within the BSNR can help us to achieve even greater things through the benefits provided by an organisation with the national and global reach of the College.
Equality representative. It is crucial that the Society is as fully representative of its members as possible, and to this end the BSNR will be appointing an Equality and Diversity Representative. This role will be important in promoting inclusivity within and accessibility to the Society’s committees and roles, and also at the Annual Scientific Meeting. Further details of this role and of the objectives will follow.
You will have seen that Dr Dipayan Mitra will be taking over as President of the BSNR at the ASM in Liverpool. Dipayan is a great choice for the Society and he has a very broad and insightful perspective on the matters that affect us. A number of opportunities will be arising in the coming months to take up key roles within the Society, and you are strongly encouraged to consider contributing in this way. Details will follow.
Finally, my profound thanks go to my colleagues on the BSNR Executive and on the Subcommittees, and to all who have contributed to and supported the programme of work that we have undertaken on your behalf. Our aim has been to make the BSNR the finest Neuroradiology Society that we can, and ultimately the success of our efforts have depended on all of your support, input and involvement. Thank you for your continued support.
With all best wishes
Danny
Daniel Birchall
President, BSNR