Conference Report

11th Nordic-Baltic Conference on Biomedical Engineering

6-10 June 1999, Tallinn, Estonia

The conference was organised by the Biomedical Engineering Centre, Tallin Technical University and the Estonian Society for Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics (ESBE and MO) in co-operation with the ESEM (European Society for Engineering and Medicine) and the ISBEM (International Society for Bioelectromagnetism), and was held together with the Regional Meeting of the IFMBE (International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering) and the IEEE EMBS (IEEE/Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society). Several institutions and companies both in and out of Estonia provided the conference with financial support. The president of the conference was Prof. Hiie Hinrikus, ESBE and MP President.

Over 200 participants from 32 countries took part in the conference.

The conference was held at the Sakala Centre in Tallin, the capital of the Republic of Estonia. The centre is a very spacious and modern building situated in the centre of the city. Owing to its versatility, the centre has been a favourite place for hosting meetings, negotiations, conferen-ces, etc. In the old and new buildings of the Sakala Centre, there are 16 auditoriums and meeting rooms accommodating up to 110 people, plus several halls, the largest one of which has 1,100 seats. Since Estonia is not, as yet, well known to the members of medical physics and biomedical engineering societies, it may be worthwhile saying a few words about the history of the country and its capital.

Tallinn, which lies in the northeastern part of the Baltic region, has always enjoyed a strategic geographical location, making it an important harbour and centre of trade and industry. Originally known as Reval, it was built in 1219 on the grounds of the harbour castle conquered by the Danes. It acquired town rights in 1248, and in 1285 joined the well-known Hanseatic League (which also comprised LŸbeck in Germany and Gdansk in Poland). The Danish period lasted from 1219 to 1346 and greatly contributed to the development of the town, whose coat of arms, showing three lions against a golden background, comes from the Danish royal coat of arms. The old town, with its stone buildings, which can now be fully admired in their original form, was completed at the time when the Livonian Order (dating from the Crusades) acted as the sovereign until 1561. During the Swedish period (1561-1710), Tallinn was involved in lengthy and destructive wars. Building activities concentrated on the development of a powerful earthen defence system outside the town wall. The silhouette of the town changed, with large baroque broaches replacing needle-sharp spires. High gothic-style trianglular gables remained part of the street scene, but the interiors of the houses were modernised. New baroque interiors were designed for churches. In the course of the Great Northern War in 1710, Tallinn surrendered to the Russian army. Peter the Great ratified all the previous privileges of the town, which had been granted by Danish and Swedish kings and the masters of the Livonian Order. These privileges provided a significantly autonomous status for Tallinn inside the Russian State. With the creation of a railway connection to St Petersburg (mid-9th century), rapid industrial development began, resulting in the town's swift growth. Large factories were built and their production was exported to Russia. The Baltic Germans, who had formerly held a leading position in the town, became a minority, and in 1877, Russian replaced German as the official language. The best part of the czarist Russian legacy in the town can be seen in its architecture. On February 24, 1918, the Estonian Salvation Committee in Tallinn declared the birth of an independent democratic Republic of Estonia. Independence had an important impact on the development of the city - the architectural contributions of the 1920s and 1930s, residential houses in particular, are still the city's most impressive buildings.

On the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in the autumn of 1939, bases for the Red Army and the Baltic Navy were established in Tallinn. By that time, the population of the city had grown to 179,000. In June 1940, Soviet troops occupied Estonia, abolishing its independence and establishing the Soviet order. On August 28, 1941, German occupation began, but towards the end of World War II, in March 1944, Tallinn suffered a Soviet air strike, which killed many thousands of people and left the city partly in ruins. From 1944 to 1991, Estonia belonged to the Soviet Union. A massive migration from Russia and other Soviet republics led to the increase in the number of inhabitants to over 500000, and the proportion of native Estonians decreased to 48.5%. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, on August 20 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Estonia declared the re-establishment of Estonia's independence.

During the conference, four plenary sessions, 20 ordinary sessions, three round-table discussions and four mini-symposiums were held on the following subjects: (1) Medical technology assessment and QA; (2) Biomechanics; (3) Lasers in medicine, nonlinear dynamics and modelling; (4) Nonlinear dynamics and signal processing; (5) Bioelectromagnetic Phenomena; (6) Biomedical Engineering Education; (7) Instrumentation; (8) Physiological Signal Processing; (9) Radiothera-py; (10) Bio-optics; (11) Electro-magnetic phenomena; (12) Biosen-sors; (13) Effects of Fields and Radiation; (14) Medical Physics Education; (15) Rehabilitation; (16) Biomaterials; and (17) Ultrasound.

All these subjects covered a very wide area of biomedical engineering and medical physics, which was of particular interest and importance to emerging countries with a relatively short tradition in the applications of science and engineering to medicine. The proceedings of the conference have been published as Supplement 1 to Volume 37, 1999, of the Medical & Biological Engineering and Computing Journal of the International Federation for Medical & Biological Engineering, and copies of the journal were offered to the participants free of charge.

Table 1 provides a list of countries, papers and participants according to the official programme. The list gives the total number of authors who contributed to several papers, so that this number is not equal to the number of participants present at the conference. It is clear that, since the conference was named the 'Nordic-Baltic Conference', the largest number of papers came from Finland, Estonia (host country), Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Poland. It should also be noted that 23 papers constituted a collaborative effort of researchers: countries such as Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia and Poland collaborated with industrialised countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, and the United Kingdom. This is a very strong tendency that should be strongly supported by international medical physics and biomedical engineering organisations such as the IOMP or IFMBE.

Discussions on the papers submitted were very lively and constructive. All the speakers were concise and to the point, allowing the conference to proceed on schedule.

The participants attended a very interesting choral concert at the Niguliste Museum, and were also taken on a guided tour of the old town. Finally, the Tallin City Government gave a sumptuous reception in the Town Hall.

The excellent organisation of the conference are thanks to the considerable efforts of Prof. Hinrikus and her co-workers, and should serve as an example for any future events of this type.

Oskar A. Chomicki

IOMP Vice-President

Email: oskar@mp.pw.edu.pl

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