Let us introduce ourselves…

A brief history as to how it all began for us

We all know life flies by but it doesn’t seem like 15 years ago since we embarked on our first Conference, as course convenors.

Here’s how it all began….and how the RAD series was established.

Conferences To Go started out back in 2009 with myself, Dr Daniel Saddik and my colleague Dr Con Tartaglia, Consultant Radiologist at Lumus Imaging. At the time we both facilitated training for radiology registrars, and wanted to extend to the wider radiology community by offering a formal conference experience with distinguished Radiology specialists from the international community.

The very first conference 'OzNEURORAD' was led by Prof Mauricio Castillo, former Neuroradiology Division Chief and Program Director, and a Fellow of the American College of Radiology, in addition to Dr Robin Cassumbhoy, of DiagnostiCare, St Vincent’s Hospital and Western Health.

It was a well-attended Imaging conference held in Australia, but at this stage it was just something we were happy to have had the experience of delivering.

It wasn’t until around four years later we had the time and opportunity to organise another imaging conference, and this time invite Professor Karen Salzman and Assistant Professor Lubdah Shah joined us from the University of Utah, USA.

With requests now flying in to run similar conferences Chest Radiology, the following year featured Professor Jeffrey Kanne of the University of Wisconsin and Dr Travis Henry, Assistant Professor of Radiology at the time at Emory University School of Medicine, who led on ChestRAD 2014.

With Abdominal Radiology the focus for the following year, we ran our first AbdoRAD 2015, with Prof Michael Federle of Stanford University and Professor Julia Fielding if the University of North Carolina.

For 2016 we thought the time was right to add in an additional CME opportunity, so we were pleased to have Professor Kanne join us again for a special Thoracic Imaging Masterclass in addition to our first Musculoskeletal Imaging Conference, SkelRAD 2016. Once again American Radiology specialists were invite to join us in Australia (Melbourne) and led the MSK Conference, notably Professor Clyde Helms (Duke University) and Professor Jon Jacobson (Michigan University at the time).

It had then been some years since we had delivered our last Neuroradiology conference so we once again hosted international Radiology Consultants, Professor David Yousem at Johns Hopkins University, and Assistant Professor Jenny Hoang (at the time from Duke University, now also at John Hopkins). Once again this conference as with all others attracted hundreds of Registrars and Radiologists from across Australia and New Zealand.

For 2018, we decided to diversify once more and offer three courses which included a new Breast Imaging Masterclass with Dr Michael Linver, Director of Mammography at the Breast Imaging Center, Albuquerque and Adjunct Professor of Radiology at the University of New Mexico.

This was also a year we welcmed back Dr Robin Cassumbhoy, with a new dedicated conference ‘Head and Neck Radiology Made Easy’ which has since been offered again in 2019, 2023, 2024 and due to demand for ‘Robin’s Rules’ and insight, it will also be offered in 2025.

We finished off 2018 with another new conference ‘AcuteRAD’ where by Professor Jorge Soto, Professor of Radiology and Chief of Radiology at Boston Medical Center, alongside Professor Clark West (Texas Medical Center) led a fantastic Emergency Radiology and Trauma Imaging Conference.

We took a step back in 2019 and only acted as convenors for one conference, but what a conference it was. AbdoRAD 2019 featured esteemed Professors Professor Mukesh Harisinghani of Harvard and Associate Professor Kartik Jhaveri of the University of Toronto who led a focussed 3-day case review Abdominal Radiology course.

Then it was COVID.

Due to our proud history of offering Medical Imaging Conferences in-person, and also due to such increased global workloads impacting our own lists, our next conference didn’t take place until 2023.

We welcomed back the great Professor Jeffrey Kanne and Professor Jonathon Chung of the University of Chicago, who delivered a wonderful 3 day ChestRAD conference. We also once again had Dr Robin Cassumbhoy share her Head & Neck Radiology expertise in 2023 and 2024.

NueroRAD 2024 is where we end this chapter, but we’ll soon announce our plans for 2025 and beyond, and we look forward to sharing where our journey will take us – perhaps for another 15 years, if you’ll have us.