Kick-Off wrap-up

Wrap-up

Welcome

On June 23d, the icoMetrix kick-off symposium Quantification of Biomedical Images: Challenges and Perspectives took place in the beautiful historical setting of the Leuven Faculty Club. This momentous event was well attended with over 150 people and strong representation from Academia, Clinical medicine, and Industry.

The preclinical and biomedical researchers, clinicians, pharma, biotech and medical device specialists were welcomed by Prof. Dr. André Oosterlinck, emeritus rector of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Chairman of the Board of icoMetrix. He gave a brief overview of the history and strategic objectives of icoMetrix and introduced the speakers.

Lectures

Prof. Dr. Gabriel P. Krestin, MD, held the academic keynote lecture. Prof. Krestin is Professor and Chairman, Department of Radiology, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, is the 1st vice-president European Society of Radiology and is Founder and Chair of the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR). He talked about Data Processing in Population Imaging and presented data from the population-based Rotterdam Study in which high-resolution, structural brain MRI (1.5 T) was performed according to a standardized protocol in several thousand individuals. Dr. Mark Schmidt, MD, who is Senior Director of the Neuroscience Therapeutic Area, at Janssen Research and Development, presented the industrial keynote lecture with a talk about Relevance of MRI for Development of New Therapies.

Both speakers underlined the growing importance of implementing population and group analysis techniques, in order to separate clinically and scientifically meaningful data from background noise. This is precisely what icoMetrix aims to do, and we were happy to discover that distinguished speakers from the academic world, as well as from healthcare industry, share our vision for quantification of imaging data. With this in mind, Dr. Wim Van Hecke, co-founder and Business Development, presented the icoMetrix portfolio and gave the participants a better understanding of what icoMetrix can provide for researchers and clinicians.

The academic session was concluded by Dr. Dirk Loeckx, co-founder and CEO of icoMetrix, who thanked the people behind icoMetrix for their vital support and the audience for their presence and their willingness to share a vision for the future. The founders of icoMetrix invited all participants to the reception. It was reassuring to see that icoMetrix generates such a broad interest, and that we can build a bridge between basic scientists and clinicians, between the academic and the industrial world, between modality suppliers and pharmaceutical companies.

Many thanks

We would like to whole-heartedly thank all of those who attended for coming along and supporting us on this exciting day. We look forward to meeting you again, also those of you who couldn’t be there, both in business and future symposia.

Additionally, Dirk Loeckx and Wim Van Hecke would like to personally thank the icoMetrix co-founders and Members of the Board for their continuous support.

We also reserve particular thanks for Prof. Stefan Sunaert and the Department of Radiology at UZ Leuven, Prof. Paul Parizel and the Department of Radiology at the Antwerp University Hospital, Prof. Paul Suetens and Prof. Frederik Maes and the Medical Image Computing center of the K.U.Leuven, and Prof. Jan Sijbers and the VisionLab of the University of Antwerp. Their unfailing support has been so instrumental in the development of the company from its inception.

Thank you all again for your interest and support of icoMetrix. We look forward to working with you and together improving healthcare for all!