Speakers

Ricardo Budde is a Full professor of Cardiovascular Radiology at Erasmus MC Rotterdam and heads the PCCT group. His research interests include advanced non-invasive imaging in ischemic heart disease and endocarditis and has a focus on PCCT in particular. He has (co-) authored over 290 peer reviewed publications. He is a member of the Executive Boards of the European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology, the Cardiovascular Institute at Erasmus MC, and the Cardiovascular Section of the Dutch Society of Radiology. He has given >150 invited lectures at international meetings and is course-director of the annual Hands-on Cardiac CT course at Erasmus MC.

Edwin Oei is Professor of Musculoskeletal Imaging at Erasmus MC Rotterdam. He is the section chief of musculoskeletal radiology and the principal investigator of the Advanced Musculoskeletal Imaging Research Erasmus MC (ADMIRE) lab. His research focuses on imaging of common musculoskeletal disorders, such as osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, sports injuries and trauma, with advanced techniques such as PCCT.

Judith van der Bie completed her studies as a Technical Physician at TU Delft in August 2021. In January 2022, she began her PhD in photon-counting CT research under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Ricardo Budde and Dr. Marcel van Straten. Her doctoral research concentrates on the clinical applications and optimization of photon-counting CT for cardiovascular imaging.

Prof. Dr. Hatem Alkadhi is Vice Chair of the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. He graduated at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany and completed his residency in Radiology and Neuroradiology at the University Hospital Zurich. He earned a Master of Public Health at the Harvard University in Boston, USA. Dr. Alkadhi´s research is focussed on cardiovascular CT imaging, he authored more than 600 scientific publications with a current h-index of 98.

Francis Baffour, M.D. is a radiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Dr. Baffour practices as a diagnostic radiologist with expertise in advanced CT and MRI techniques for musculoskeletal (MSK) imaging. Dr. Baffour’s clinical and research interests align with his goal of identifying novel applications for advanced imaging technologies and rapidly translating these discoveries to the clinical practice for patient care.  As Associate Medical Director of the CT Clinical Innovation Center in the Department of Radiology, he supports the mission of facilitating high impact imaging innovations with direct impact on patient care such as radiation dose reduction techniques, new CT technologies, and quantitative assessment of disease activity.

Sara graduated cum laude from the Medical School of the University of Genova in 2010 and completed her residency in Radiology at the University of Genova in 2016. Due to her strong interest in Cardiovascular Radiology she spent the last year of her residency as clinical and research fellow at the Radiology Department of the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam. After the end of her residency she returned to the Erasmus Medical Center for a one-year Fellowship in Cardiovascular Imaging of the European School of Radiology (ESOR) and to complete her PhD.

Since May 2018, Sara is working as radiologist at the University Hospital of Lyon in France (Hospices Civils de Lyon) with specialization in Cardiovascular as well as Thoracic Imaging and has a joint appointment with the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1. She is currently involved in several research projects including the development of cardiovascular applications of Spectral Imaging, on Dual Energy CT and Photon Counting CT.

Michael Brun Andersen is an Associate Professor in Radiology and Head of research at the department of radiology at Copenhagen University Hospital Herlev/Gentofte. His primaty research interest is in advanced CT. Within abdominal imaging he has together with colleagues demonstrated PCCT’s ability to visualize previous unseen structures in the pancreas and currently has a focus on what benefits ultra-high spatial resolution can offer in both pancreas imaging and other aspects of abdominal imaging. Furthermore, in oncological imaging, his work have focused on multienergy CT in the workup of patients suspected for malignancy, demonstrating the benefit of low-virtual monoenergetic images in detection of cancer findings and the ability to characterize lesions minimizing the need for follow-up imag

Alina van de Burgt started as a technical physician at Alrijne Hospital in Leiden in 2019. From 2021 to 2023, she completed a clinical fellowship in cardiac imaging at Alrijne Hospital and Leiden University Medical Center, focusing on cardiac scan reporting and workflow optimization, while undertaking a PhD in quantitative nuclear imaging. In February 2024, she joined the Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Department at Erasmus MC. Currently, she focuses on the clinical implementation of novel imaging techniques, including photon-counting CT, as well as research, education, and protocol optimization.

Marcel Dijkshoorn is a specialized CT radiographer with >20 years experience. He has a vast knowledge about the technical and practical aspects of CT acquisition in general and cardiac CT in particular. In Erasmus MC, Marcel is a key person in CT acquisition protocol development. Over the years, he has trained many CT technicians both nationally and internationally.

Tilman Emrich is  an attending radiologist specializing in cardiovascular imaging at the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany. In parallel, he works as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Radiology and Director of Photon Counting CT Research at the Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Division of Cardiovascular Research, Medical University of South Carolina, USA.

He board certified in diagnostic radiology in 2015  and obtained cardiac imaging (CT and CMR) certifications in 2017 and the European Board of Cardiovascular Imaging (EBCR) Diploma in 2021. His main scientific interests focuses on the implementation of Photon Counting Detector CT for cardiovascular applications

Dr. Alexander Hirsch is a practicing cardiologist and associate professor at the Erasmus MC. He specializes in non-invasive imaging and is appointed at both the Department of Cardiology and Radiology. He leads the cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging group, and his research focuses on cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging and cardiac CT and their applications in clinical practice.

Linda (A.A.) Jacobi- Postma currently works at the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at the Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. She is a dedicated neuro and head and neck radiologist with a strong focus on educating residents, fellows, and colleagues. Her research mainly focuses on imaging in neuro-oncology, vertigo, and stroke. She has a particular interest in dual-energy applications in neuro and head and neck radiology, as well as the use of photon-counting CT in these fields.

Shuai Leng, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medical Physics, Section Head of CT Physics, and Director of the Medical Physics Residency Program at Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, and a Fellow of American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT), and Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). His research interest is in technical development and clinical applications of computed tomography (CT) in diagnosis and image-guided therapy, with recent work focusing on photon-counting-detector-CT which he has been working with multiple prototype and commercial systems in the last 15 years. Dr. Leng has been actively involved in professional societies (e.g., AAPM, RSNA, DICOM, and IEC,) and has published over 260 peer-reviewed journal articles, 350 abstracts and proceedings, and 20 issued patents.

Aad van der Lugt leads the Department of Radiology & Nuclear Medicine at Erasmus MC. His research interests focus on diagnosis and treatment of neuromuscular disease and acute stroke in particular. He was co-founder and director of the Erasmus MC Stroke Centrum and principal investigator of the Mr. Clean study. Before he was appointed head of the department in 2022, he led the PCCT team at Erasmus MC.

Pál Maurovich-Horvat MD PhD MPH, professor of cardiology and radiology, head of Medical Imaging Centre and chair of the Department of Radiology at Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.
He is a Board Member of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography and the Editor-in-chief of IMAGING.
Dr. Maurovich-Horvat graduated from the Semmelweis University in 2006, which was followed by a three-year advanced cardiovascular imaging research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA. Dr. Maurovich-Horvat studied clinical effectiveness at the Harvard University, School of Public Health, where he graduated in 2012 and received a Master of Public Health degree.His research interest focuses on cardiac CT and personalized cardiovascular risk assessment.

A recognized leader in the development and evaluation of new CT technology and dose reduction methods, Cynthia H. McCollough, PhD, is the Brooks-Hollern Professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she holds the rank of professor in both medical physics and biomedical engineering. Dr. McCollough is a fellow of the American College of Radiology, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She has over 500 peer-reviewed papers and multiple NIH grants related to CT imaging. She has served as the president of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and is a vice-president of the International Society of Computed Tomography. She received her master’s and doctorate degrees in medical physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison after graduating in physics from Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The first whole-body, high-flux photon counting CT (PCCT) was installed in her lab in 2014 and she has played a key role in the development of PCCT since then.

Dr Casper Mihl completed his radiology training in 2016. He received additional training in cardiovascular imaging at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney (2013) and the Alfred Heart Centre in Melbourne, Australia (2020). As of 2016, Casper Mihl works as a radiologist at Maastricht UMC+ with a clinical emphasis on cardiovascular and abdominal radiology. He also serves as the head of the CT unit. His primary emphasis in both the clinical field and his research is focused on the optimization of scan and contrast media injection protocols in CT and multimodality imaging of the heart with a special focus on (supra)ventricular arrhythmias and (non)ischemic cardiomyopathies.

Dr. Noël is an Associate Professor, Director of CT Research, and Director of the Computed Tomography Center at the University of Pennsylvania. For over a decade, he has led a research program focused on advancing X-ray and computed tomography technologies. His work emphasizes the integration of hardware, software, reconstruction, and post-processing to develop comprehensive clinical solutions.

Mathias Prokop is Professor of Radiology and Chairman of the Department of Medical Imaging in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He had studied Medicine and Physics in Germany and trained at Hanover Medical School. His career took him to the Vienna, Austria and Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he established himself as one of the pioneers of novel CT technologies and lung screening. His department in Nijmegen focusses on impactful innovations in care and now hosts one of the largest research groups in Europe. He now serves as  2^nd Vice President of the European Society of Radiology.

Lion Stammen is a specialized CT radiographer, and completed a master’s degree in Epidemiology. In 2023, she began her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Bibi Martens, Dr. Cecile R.L.P.N. Jeukens and Prof. Dr. Joachim E. Wildberger. She combines her PhD research with ongoing clinical practice, allowing her to integrate practical experience with academic insights. Her research concentrates on contrast media optimization in CT, mostly focusing on photon-counting CT.

Marcel van Straten studied Applied Physics at Delft University of Technology. His PhD project at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam focused on the application of image registration techniques in spiral CT. After that he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Medical Physics of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He worked on the optimization and dosimetric aspects of CT. In 2008 he joined the Department of Radiology of Erasmus MC. As a medical physicist and assistant professor, he focuses on the standardization and optimization of image quality in x-ray computed tomography based on the laws of physics and driven by technological innovations.

Dr. Szczykutowicz “Stick” is an Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin. He specializes in all things CT from reconstruction algorithms to technologist workflow. Protocols developed by his team have been shipped to 3,500 sites around the globe. Dr. Szczykutowicz is the author of 80 papers, 3 book chapters, the book “The CT Handbook: Optimizing protocols for today’s feature-rich scanners”, 5 patents, and a consultant to 5 companies. In 2023 he founded RadUnity Corp. which provides solutions for harmonizing medical imaging.

Ass. Prof. Dr. Ilias Tsiflikas is Vice Chair of the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the University Hospital Tübingen, Germany. He specializes in Pediatric Radiology, with expertise spanning pediatric ultrasound, low-dose CT, whole-body MRI, and PET/MR. He has (co-)authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and is an active member of several national and international societies, including the German Radiological Society (DRG), the European Society of Radiology (ESR), and the Society for Pediatric Radiology (GPR).