Leesburg, VA -- The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) welcomed the newest members of the College of SIIM Fellows. They are Bradley J. Erickson, MD, PhD; Elizabeth A. Krupinski, PhD; and Richard L. Morin, PhD. The three were introduced by Steven C. Horii, MD, president of the College of SIIM Fellows, during the Society's annual business meeting in conjunction with its recent Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA.

Bradley Erickson has been an active practitioner, researcher, and educator in the field of medicine and a strong promoter of imaging informatics education and fellowship training. He has a PhD in biophysics and is a clinically active Board-certified neuroradiologist. Dr. Erickson is Associate Professor of Radiology and Informatics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester.

He has made contributions to imaging informatics in the areas of validation of lossy compression for diagnostic imaging and development of change detection technology for medical imaging. On the clinical side he has been involved with the establishment of a 3D lab; the implementation of multiple PACS; specification, development, and commercialization of an enterprise image archive; establishment of an informatics division in radiology; and he has developed several tools for the use of measurement, templating, and change analysis. He was the founder of one of the first imaging informatics fellowships and has been involved in the program planning for national meetings, including SIIM and RSNA.

Dr. Erickson has been Program Committee Chair for the SIIM Annual Meeting for the past five years and is incoming Chair of SIIM, effective July 2008. He has been a leader of the SIIM Research & Development Committee since its inception and a member of the Transforming the Radiological Interpretation Process (TRIP™) Subcommittee. He is a member of the Editorial Board for SIIM's peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Digital Imaging, and was previously Treasurer of SIIM and Co-Chair of the Annual Meeting Scientific Committee.

Elizabeth Krupinski's research activities have been guided by two core goals - understanding the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that contribute to medical image perception, and utilizing this information to improve the clinical reading environment, diagnostic accuracy, and thus patient care. Her research has focused on perception in medical imaging, evaluation of human visual performance, display technologies, and telemedicine. Her accomplishments include work in optimization of digital displays for improved accuracy, radiologist workflow evaluation with perception focus, and contributions to CR/DR digital mammography guidelines. She is one of less than 10 researchers in the world who is using a unique tool - an eye-position tracker - to observe how radiologists search images without imposing viewing restrictions on them.

Dr. Krupinski's contributions to the field have provided a different perspective - one in which the radiologist is the focus of attention rather than the images or devices surrounding them.

She is a tenured Research Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona, and the Associate Director for Evaluation and Assessment for the Arizona Telemedicine Program. Dr. Krupinski is a member of the SIIM Board of Directors, Chair of the SIIM Research & Development Committee, and a member of the TRIP™ Subcommittee. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Digital Imaging.

Richard Morin has been instrumental in several key SIIM initiatives in recent years, including the launch of the TRIP™ program, the formation of the American Board of Imaging Informatics (ABII), and the transition of the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology (SCAR) to SIIM. Dr. Morin is the Brooks-Hollern Professor of Radiologic Physics at the Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL.

Dr. Morin's involvement with computers in radiology began during his Master's thesis and continued with his PhD dissertation. His work has involved workflow management, CT reconstruction and processing algorithms, workflow analysis, Duel-Energy QCT, and MR reconstruction techniques to reduce motion artifacts. He also provided design, development, and technical leadership in implementing PACS institution-wide at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville and was one of the early implementers of the electronic radiology practice at the Mayo Clinic at a time when few medical physicists were involved with PACS and digital medical imaging.

He is a former Chair of SIIM, helped shape the SCAR/SIIM committee structure, and was one of the developers of the TRIP™ initiative - being among the first to articulate concerns about how radiology will be practiced in a digital world with ever-increasing data sets - and current Chair of the Subcommittee. He serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital Imaging. He also is Chair of the American Board of Imaging Informatics and Secretary-Treasurer of the American Board of Radiology.

The new fellows join an impressive list of electronic imaging pioneers who are SIIM Fellows:

* Katherine P. Andriole, PhD
* Robert M. Allman, MD
* Ronald L. Arenson, MD
* David E. Avrin, MD, PhD
* Roger A. Bauman, MD (1936-2005)
* Paul J. Chang, MD
* Samuel J. Dwyer, PhD (1932-2008)
* Joseph N. Gitlin, DPH
* Robert A. Greenes, MD, PhD
* Janice Honeyman-Buck, PhD
* Steven C. Horii, MD
* Gilbert R. Jost, MD
* John W. Loop, MD (1924-1990)
* David W. Piraino, MD
* Rangaraj Rangayyan, PhD
* Eliot L. Siegel, MD

Requirements for consideration as a SIIM Fellow are a minimum of eight years membership in SIIM/SCAR, and significant contributions to the field of computer applications in radiology or imaging.

The College of SIIM Fellows was previously the College of SCAR Fellows. The name was changed in conjunction with the name change from SCAR to SIIM - the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine - in 2006.