14 May 2021
Dr. Thomas Grist, Chair of Radiology at UW-Madison, to give the SMRT President’s Lecture
By Walter Block, Ph.D.
In a pivotal scene in the movie “Ford vs Ferrari”, Matt Damon’s character Carroll Shelby takes Ford CEO Henry Ford II out for terrifying test drive in Ford’s new racing prototype. Damon’s hairpin turns and high-speed driving convince Ford II how important the driver is in pulling out the performance that Ford designers and engineers built into the car. The impact of high performing teams driving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners will be detailed at the upcoming joint meeting of the Society of Magnetic Resonance Technologists (SMRT) and the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) on Sunday, May 16. SMRT President Nancy Hill Beluk has asked Dr. Thomas Grist, Chair of Radiology at UW-Madison, to give the invited President’s Lecture. She’s asked him to tell the story of how some of the first vascular imaging technology was test-driven and refined into a clinical imaging product thirty years ago. As former technologist and applications specialist at GE Healthcare, Hill Beluk was front and center in making vascular imaging work from the user’s perspective. She has long advocated for the impact that continuous technologist training and partnership can have on an organization’s productivity.
“Obviously having high quality MR scanners is necessary to provide a high-quality radiology service,” states Grist. “But I don’t know if the general public appreciates how much of the overall quality is derived from teamwork between the MR technologists and the radiologists. The complexity of MRI requires this teamwork to reliably get the power out of these incredible machines.” After his talk entitled, “Go with the Flow: Lessons Learned About the Importance of Radiologist-Technologist Teamwork in the Development of MRA,” Hill Beluk will join Grist, along with former Chair of Radiology at UW Dr. Pat Turski, technologists Kathy Robichaud , medical physcisict Frank Korosec, and engineer Wally Block in a panel discussion. “The path from basic gradient-recalled pulse sequences to a clinical vascular imaging product was exciting and fun, with some expected hiccups and some entirely unexpected ones”, noted Hill Beluk. “I think the story will provide insights into how utilizing the experience of technologists is even more necessary in the rapidly-changing world of MRI today.”
The lecture is part of an ongoing and expanding effort to tailor the joint ISMRM/SMRT meeting towards practicing radiologists. Initiatives like the Breast MRI Meeting within a Meeting and the SMRT educational ventures are designed to allow radiologists to pull value relevant to their practice out of the meeting in a condensed timeframe that fits within their clinical schedules.
