High performance neuroimaging conference in Boston

This was the second annual conference on MR neuroimaging and neuroscience enabled by high performance gradient coils. It followed the inaugural meeting at the GE Research center in December 2022, and was held in the Brigham and Women's hospital campus in Boston on Thursday 12/14, hosted by Prof. Carl-Fredrik (CF) Westin. Compared to the last one, the talks this year were more application-oriented than engineering, although there were interesting discussions on the comparison between GE's Magnus and Siemens' Connectome gradient coils. In particular, the current Connectome "2" user, Prof. S. Huang, gave a short talk on her team's experience with the new Siemens system. This helped make the conference take on a more vendor-neutral, academic forum-like atmosphere. Participants from all over the country and even outside (Lund university of Sweden), in addition to dozens (I think) of attendees from the local, BWH-Harvard medical school, appeared to reflect and echo a high level of community interest in high-performance* brain MRI. 

[*Note: High performance in this context means high-performance gradient coils, not necessarily dependent on static fields in excess of 3T. Both Magnus and Connectome gradient coils operate at 3T.]