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The International Congress on Ophthalmic Photography, San Francisco, 18–21 May 2006
The International Congress on Ophthalmic Photography (ICOP) was held between the 18th and 21st of May in San Francisco, USA. This is the eighth ICOP meeting and the international flavour of this format continues to be an educational event but, more importantly, an interaction on a global scale meeting new colleagues and re‐meeting old friends. Previous ICOP meetings have been held in Rome (1986), Singapore (1990), Toronto 1994, Edinburgh (1998) and Adelaide (2002). ICOP is run as an independent meeting for all interested ophthalmic imagers and was initially seed‐funded by the Ophthalmic Photographer’s Society. This is truly an International meeting run conjointly by the OPS, the Ophthalmic Imaging Association (UK), the Japanese Ophthalmic Society and the Australian Institute of Medical and Biological Illustrators.
As with all good conferences, there is a mixture of formal presentations with a social and interactive side. A good meeting encompasses all three of these requirements and ICOP was an outstanding success in all departments. San Francisco is certainly one of the more visual and interesting of American cities, and time off sight‐seeing was a very big plus for the location.
The formal programme contained a variety of topics and presenters from around the world. Building on previous meetings, there continued to be an interest in Optical Coherence Tomography, but the emphasis now seems to have shifted to diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening and autofluorescence imaging. The programme reflected these changes by grouping together speakers with similar topics allowing multinational delegates to outline their experiences and findings. The UK is at the forefront of developing a nationwide approach to DR screening along with formalizing educational programmes; delegates were interested in hearing about the UK experiences and how they could be applied to their own local screening programmes. At the end of each session there were animated discussions with energetic audience participation. These open forums were held in an atmosphere of collective interest with often amusing interchanges.
Professor Giovanni Staurenghi MD, from Milan, was the first of three invited keynote speakers. Dr. Staurenghi amazed us with an outstanding presentation incorporating autofluorescence, fluorescein angiography, indocyanine green angiography, infra‐red and red free imagery illustrating various pathologies showing the relevance of each imaging modality using multiple comparative images. This was a truly awe inspiring presentation both by the speaker’s ability to inform and entertain, but also the sheer quality and volume of the images presented.
Ken Boysdon, the President of Megavision, California, gave the second keynote speech entitled ‘Digital horizons, you ain’t seen nothing yet!’ Ken took us back through history to cave paintings as an information storage method, followed by a historic progression suggesting that future data storage and transfer rates will by far eclipse our current perceptions of what lies ahead.
Ken Boysdon, the President of Megavision, California, maker of large format digital camera chips gave an energetic presentation on digital storage possibilities.
Dr. Lawrence Yannuzzi M.D. from New York completed the keynote threesome. His talk was entitled ‘Autofluorescence imaging 2006’. Dr. Yannuzzi gave an entertaining outline of autofluorescence and the emerging understanding of the role of lipofuscin in the conceptualization of degenerative processes of retinal diseases. There were a series of well documented and thoroughly illustrated case histories using multiple imaging modalities all given via a polished presentation style.
The melding of both social and educational programmes was considered a great success by all. Paul Montague (general chairperson), Denice Barseness (on‐site coordinator), Cynthia Ramsey (commercial support coordinator) and Ethan Priel (abstract committee chair) and all those behind the scenes helpers are to be congratulated for staging a lively and educational meeting. An atmosphere for global communication and advancement in ophthalmic imaging was forged and I am sure many new friends were made and old friends reinvigorated by this latest ICOP gathering.