The 8th SINAPSE Annual Scientific Meeting was held on 17 June 2016, hosted by the University of Stirling. The programme featured stimulating presentations on the latest developments in clinical and experimental imaging, and opportunities to network with fellow imaging researchers from across Scotland.

Our keynote speaker was Dr Jon Simons from the University of Cambridge, who gave a wonderful lecture showcasing his neuroimaging work on memory, elegantly combining basic cognitive neuroscience research with applications in clinical populations. Dr Gordon Waiter from the University of Aberdeen delivered an informative invited talk reporting on the recent visit to Taiwan that he and Dr David Dickie from the University of Edinburgh made as representatives from SINAPSE for an international research collaboration on diffusion MRI data analysis.

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Dr Jon Simons Dr Gordon Waiter

The remaining talks were proffered oral presentations from SINAPSE members across the network, covering research topics as diverse as visual processing, episodic memory, traumatic brain injury, neurodegeneration, mobile EEG, image analysis methods, radiotherapy, cardiac imaging, and retinal imaging. The final talk of the day was a captivating overview of Optical Coherence Tomography by Dr James Cameron from the University of Edinburgh (who had the winning entry from SINAPSE in the International Year of Light video competition last year). Thomas Di Virgilio from the University of Stirling was awarded the prize for Best Proffered Talk for his excellent presentation, Using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to identify acute brain changes following sub-concussive head impact.

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Dr James Cameron Thomas Di Virgilio

The ASM programme also featured a wide array of proffered poster presentations, divided between morning and afternoon sessions. This year, selected poster presenters representing the breadth of research topics and groups across the SINAPSE network were invited to give 2-minute ‘lightning talks’ during the meeting. In the poster sessions that followed, delegates indicated their favourite posters through a public voting system. The award for Best Poster in the morning session went to Aaron Daubney from the University of St Andrews (Comparison of NeuroImaging MRI Data Pre and Post Scanner Upgrade), and in the afternoon session, to Thomas Pearson from the University of Edinburgh (Multi-modal retinal scanning for diagnostic and therapeutic biomarker discovery in Multiple Sclerosis).

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Aaron Daubney Thomas Pearson

The meeting was supported with generous sponsorship provided by:

  • Premium Sponsor: Siemens Healthineers
  • Partners: Holoxica and Toshiba Medical
  • Exhibitors: Bartec, Bayer Healthcare, Bracco, GE Healthcare, Imaging Equipment Ltd., NHS Research Scotland, and Scottish Mental Health Research Network

A photo gallery of highlights from the day can be viewed here: http://www.sinapse.ac.uk/event-photo-galleries/asm-2016

A 360 degree video of scenes from the meeting can be found here: http://www.sinapse.ac.uk/news/experience-the-2016-sinapse-asm-in-360-degree-video