The National Center for Image Guided Therapy (NCIGT), funded jointly by NCRR, NCI, and NIBIB under grant U41-RR019703, serves as a national resource for all aspects of research into interventions enabled and enhanced by imaging. The center is based on the premise that multidisciplinary development of innovative image-guided intervention technologies will enable effective, less invasive or non invasive treatments that are not only more economical, but also produce better outcomes. In addition to conducting innovative science as demonstrated by 100+ peer reviewed publications since its inception in 2005, NCIGT has developed a strong outreach program for the IGT research community in collaboration with other research efforts head-quartered at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. This includes hosting workshops, hands-on working meetings for engineering system development, tutorials for clinical end0users, and an informative website at www.ncigt.org. The goal of these outreach efforts is to facilitate the exchange of knowledge within the NIH funded IGT community and to allow new individual investigators to efficiently leverage existing research efforts. The third joint workshop by NCIGT and NIH on Future Directions in Image-Guided Therapy is being planned for October 15-16, 2009, at the Rockville Hilton and Executive Meeting Center in Rockville, MD. The goal of the workshop is a natural continuation of the community discussion started in the first two workshops in the series and to share insights about future directions of the field. This meeting will be chaired by Dr. Jolesz and we expect approximately 200 attendees including distinguished members of the academia, junior faculty, postdoctoral research fellows, students, as well as representatives from industry and federal agencies interested in the field of image-guided interventions. Public Health Relevance: The third joint workshop by NCIGT and NIH on Future Directions in Image-Guided Therapy is being planned for October 15-16, 2009, at the Rockville Hilton and Executive Meeting Center in Rockville, MD.
