Bortolotti, Laura

Dineen, Aine T

Fuchs, Patrick S

Grist, James T

Lesbats, Clementine

Pickles, Elisabeth S

Sakhabalkar, Priyanka

So, Po-Wah

UCL Discovery

Title ‘The MRI Education Course’ – a free resource for the community to provide MRI education, across the Europe and Iran, established during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Authors  Laura Bortolotti 1, Elisabeth S. Pickles 2,3, Aine T. Dineen 4, Priyanka Sakhabalkar 5, Patrick S. Fuchs 6, Clementine Lesbats 7, Po-Wah So 8, James T. Grist 9,10,11,12.  Affiliations 1 Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, UK 2 Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK,  3. Perspectum Ltd, Oxford, UK 4. School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience,Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland 5 Dept of cellular and molecular physiology, University of Liverpool, UK 6 Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, UK. 7 The institute for Cancer Research, London, UK. 8 The Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK 9 The Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Oxford, UK 10 The Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics, University of Oxford, UK 11 The Department of Radiology, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, UK 12 The Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK   Corresponding author Please direct any correspondence to james.grist@dpag.ox.ac.uk, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.    To the Editor:  MRI teaching is commonly undertaken within individual institutions as well as less frequently, but often with a wider range of experts involved in the teaching program, at national and international conferences.1,2 The latter approach often requires delegates to travel long distances to access educational material and, combined with often expensive registration fees, precludes those who cannot afford this approach. There are a few dedicated video channels to MRI education, allowing for users to catch up on topics that they may have missed during their lecture course. 3,4,5  During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was commonplace to move to an online platform to deliver content. We have initiated and developed an online, open access, MRI education course to support free magnetic resonance for all.  An overview of the course The education course was initially designed and implemented by J.T.G. in January 2021 to provide shared MRI education between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. An online platform (Microsoft Teams, Microsoft, USA) was chosen to run the course, with talks live recorded and then recordings were placed on the British and Irish Chapter of the ISMRM website for free access post-event5. Potential attendees were contacted via internal mailing lists, and speakers approached through known contacts in the field.  Dissemination to a wider audience  In Autumn 2021, the initiative was extended to the British and Irish Chapter of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (BIC-ISMRM), with Twitter, LinkedIn, and the BIC-ISMRM Jisc mailing list used to disseminate the upcoming talk invites.7 To expand the course, European ISMRM chapters were approached to suggest topics for talks and potential speakers, and to share the invites with their members.   Education framework  The talks in each series were categorised into ‘physics’ and ‘clinical applications’ of MRI. If a talk on MRI safety was included, it was clearly signposted that it did not replace institutional safety requirements. Time for questions and answers was provided at the end of most talks. No funding or fees were sought for the course.  Lecture analysis and continuing development  The number of participants at each talk was recorded, and a feedback form was circulated at the end of each lecture series to gather insight for further improvement.  So far, talks have ranged from introductory lectures in MRI Physics, through to hyperpolarized MRI, lung, and prostate imaging, with a total of 27 talks delivered from January 2021 to Summer 2022. Speakers, drawn from across the European and the North American continent, included academics, healthcare professionals, and industrial employees. There are 590 subscribers to the BIC-ISMRM mailing list, with subscribers located from around the world with, on average, over 100 attendees for each talk.  Feedback from the lecture series was primarily positive, with individuals expressing their thanks for providing high quality free education and attending more than 50% of the talks or re-watching the recordings. Talk attendees included researchers and clinicians at different career stages.  In conclusion, a free education initiative has been instigated and grown to encompass nearly all of Europe, to provide freely accessible magnetic resonance, and associated science and safety, education. To access recordings of previous talks, please visit the MR Education series page on the BIC-ISMRM website.6 To access the future talks, please sign up to the BIC-ISMRM Jisc mailing list to receive invites.7   Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Benelux, British & Irish, German, Iberian, Iranian, Italian, and Nordic chapters of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and the SMRT for their help and ongoing support for this initiative.  References (1) ISMRM MR Academy, https://www.ismrm.org/online-education-program/. Accessed 20th September 2022. (2) SMRT Online Education, https://www.ismrm.org/smrt/smrted/. Accessed 20th September 2022. (3) Albert Einstein College of Medicine, https://www.youtube.com/c/EinsteinCollegeofMed. Accessed 21st September 2022. (4) Stanford Radiology https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgAoFeFMKQ-f1XVPrFBslQ. Accessed 21st September 2022. (5) Will Grissom talks, https://www.youtube.com/c/WillGrissom. Accessed 21st September 2022. (6) British and Irish Chapter of the ISMRM MR Education page, https://www.ismrm.org/chapters/british-chapter/mr-edu-series/. Accessed 3rd October 2022.  (7) BIC-ISMRM Jisc mailing list, https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=BCISMRM. Accessed 21st September 2022. 

English

“The MRI education course” – A free resource for the community to provide MRI education, across the Europe and Iran, established during the COVID-19 pandemic

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10159624/

“The MRI education course” – A free resource for the community to provide MRI education, across the Europe and Iran, established during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

UCL Discovery