Finnish Society's Second Medical Physics and Medical Engineering Day

The Finnish Society arranged the second Medical Physics and Medical Engineering Day in Biomedicum, Helsinki on 9 January 2003. There were 110 active participants from all over Finland. As with the first MPME Day, the idea was to offer students a get-together meeting and to promote the Society to them. The occasion offered the companies a possibility to present their job opportunities and products. The main event during the Day was a poster presentation of Master's graduate theses in the field of medical physics and engineering completed during 2002. The best works were rewarded. Several departments from the hosting Helsinki University of Technology presented their education and research on biomedical engineering and medical physics by oral presentations. In addition Tampere University of Technology and the Universities of Helsinki, Kuopio and Oulu demonstrated their operations via a number of posters.

Twenty-six Master's graduates participated in the poster competition. The award of 2002 was donated by Instrumentarium Imaging. The works were evaluated based on the poster presentations. The judges were Martti Kalke, research manager from Instrumentarium Imaging and 5 Finnish Society's council members; prof. Jari Hyttinen, prof. Timo Jämsä (senior academy researcher) Jukka Nenonen, prof. Raimo Sepponen, and assistsnt. prof. Jari Viik. The jury decided to give 1102 to the best work and 300 awards to three runners up.

Those rewarded were:

1. Mikko Laasasen, University Kuopio and University of Joensuu (1102)
   "Ultrasound-indentation method and instrument for the diagnosis of articular cartilage quality"
2. Jussi Aarnio, University of Kuopio (300)
   "A new method for determining acoustic phase shift caused by the skull bone with pulsed ultrasound"
3. Marco Casagrande, Helsinki University of Technology (300)
   "Optical tweezers in measuring leukocyte adhesion forces"
4. Antti Happonen, Tampere University of Technology (300)
   "Sinogram filtering using a stackgram domain"

The abstracts of Master's graduate theses presented during the second MPME Day are on the Finnish Society's web site, http://www.ee.tut.fi/~lfty/lft_paiva/posters03.html. The four best works are in English with an author's photo.

After the official program the evening entertainment was arranged by Datex-Ohmeda in their premises. A much-needed evening meal and drinks were provided and good ideas for further development of the meeting were discussed in sauna.

Jari Viik, secretary
jari.viik@tut.fi