This funding application is to support travel and registration costs of under-represented groups to attend the 18th Annual International Conference on Biomedical Applications of Electrical Impedance Tomography (ICBAEIT), which will be held on June 21?24, 2017 at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering in Hanover, New Hampshire. This conference started in 2000, and since its inception has run annually as the premiere scientific meeting for creative research into the development of electrical impedance imaging technologies and their use in medicine and biology. The objective of this conference is to bring together researchers from academia, hospitals and clinics, national laboratories, and industries to jointly examine how new electrical impedance imaging technologies can bring progresses to medical practices, biological understandings, and the management of patients with a variety of clinical pathologies. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a low-cost, safe, and highly specific medical imaging modality that leverages the electrical property (bioimpedance) contrast between benign and pathological tissues for a variety of potential clinical applications. The conference goals are to encourage scientific exchange between EIT researchers from academic labs, clinical research, commercial enterprises and national laboratories, to critically assess the state of our field and to set goals for the future. The support for this meeting will contribute to our ability to strengthen and renew both the domestic and international EIT community by promoting a personal level interaction between senior and junior researchers and those from under-represented groups in a social environment, while ensuring that diversity and family accommodation is encouraged. The meeting has a planned set of oral sessions with good participation from basic research, applied technology development, and medical researchers and a series of workshops targeted at junior researchers and those typically under-represented at medical image conferences. The participation of MDs in the accepted speakers will be increased this year, and yet fundamental breakthroughs in biomedical technology and applications will still be a primary focus. Based on the growing number of EIT-based publications since the start of this annual conference and the longevity of the conference, together with our proposed workshop and oral session agenda, we expect this will be one of the best venues for our EIT community. Funding to maximize female and student participation, as requested here, is an opportunity to ensure that maximum equity is achieved in providing access to these under- represented groups.
The International Conference on Biomedical Applications of Electrical Impedance Tomography (ICBAEIT) is held annually to provide one of the premiere venues for discussion of research ideas in electrical impedance imaging. The presentations and discussion focus on innovative technologies, which can transform diagnosis or therapy in areas such as neurology, urology, cardiology, oncology and respiratory management.
