Message from the ASM Chair

On behalf of our planning committee, I wish you a warm welcome to the 71st COMP Annual Scientific Meeting hosted this year in London, Ontario. Our organizing committee has been working very hard over the past year to bring you an exciting program under the theme Advancing Care Through Personalized Imaging and Adaptive Radiotherapy!

Our keynote presentation this year will be given by Dr. Karl Otto, who will share his experience from a career of invention and implementation of novel medical physics technology. Dr. Otto is currently the CSO at Radformation and an Adjunct Professor at UBC and is a world-renowned innovator for his developmental work on AI auto-contouring and, the most common form of radiotherapy globally, VMAT. Following Dr. Otto’s keynote, we will have a new format of Theme Symposium this year with an interactive debate! The topic for this year’s debate is ‘Be it resolved that CT is the superior imaging modality for online adaptive radiotherapy’. We’ll have four speakers who’ve implemented online adaptive programs on both CT and/or MR based systems deliver arguments on the pros and cons. Please join us and cast your vote!

We’ve had an incredible number of submissions to this year’s conference with just under 70 oral presentations and the same number of posters, with sessions on Treatment Planning, AI and Big Data, Adaptive RT, Dosimetry, and Quality & Safety. In addition, this year we’ll have the always highly anticipated competition sessions with Thursday’s Young Investigator’s Symposium and Friday’s Highlights session. The scientific abstracts this year truly reinforce the thriving cutting-edge research happening across Canadian medical physics, and I look forward to learning from the work being showcased alongside all of you.

Throughout the conference we also have an exciting program of professional development and continuing education sessions. These begin with Wednesday’s pre-conference workshop on re-irradiation concurrent with the Young Professionals Day. Workshops and CE sessions continue throughout the program with focus on leadership development, historical milestones, professional affairs, computational skill development, and EDI advocacy.

COMP and the ASM planning committee again this year are committed to recognizing and celebrating the diversity of our community. With direct engagement with the CWC-IDEA Subcommittee through our IDEA planning committee chair, we have prioritized inclusivity in moderating, included unconscious bias training for judges, and have included content in the program such as the CWC-IDEA luncheon and CE session on amplifying voices. Please join us throughout the conference in promoting a more diverse and inclusive event.

In addition to the educational and professional content, we have included a series of social events we hope will allow our community to come together over the course of the conference. Between Wednesday’s welcome reception featuring a keynote and live entertainment, Thursday’s student night out, Friday’s Fun Run and banquet, we hope you can reconnect with old friends- and make some new ones!

With a very sincere thank you to this year’s organizing committee, and to members of the COMP office who’ve worked tirelessly to bring you this year’s program, I wish you an excellent conference and hope you enjoy the program.

I look forward to seeing you all in London!

Lee MacDonald
Planning Committee Chair – Nova Scotia Health – Halifax, NS