ACR Committee on Pediatric Imaging Research

The ACR Pediatric Imaging Research (ACR–PIR) committee has been appointed by Marta Hernanz-Schulman in her capacity as chair of the Pediatric Commission of the American College of Radiology (ACR). The ACR Committee on Pediatric Imaging Research will develop, prioritize and recommend important research directions in the field of pediatric radiology. The committee is chaired by Heike Daldrup-Link and Stephan Voss and includes 16 research priority leaders and 16 advisory committee members, who have been chosen to represent a combination of senior research expertise and junior research enthusiasm. The committee is closely connected to the Academy of Radiology Research via ex officio member and adviser Michael Kalutkiewicz, senior director of government affairs for the Academy of Radiology Research and vice president of government affairs for the Coalition for Imaging and Bioengineering Research (CIBR). As the committee starts identifying some of the avenues that will lead to meaningful and productive pediatric imaging research, it will communicate them via a new ACR–PIR website (currently developed by Seth Crapp and team: http://pedrad.dnnstaging. com/Research/ACRPediatricImagingResearch.aspx) and a white paper on new and important directions for pediatric imaging research. The committee met for the first time on May 13, 2013, at the SPR meeting in San Antonio and had its first follow-up teleconference on July 1, 2013 and had several meetings and phone conferences since then. Members of the committee developed the mission of the committee and agreed upon immediate action items. The mission of the ACR–PIR committee is “to revolutionize the care of children by fostering high-impact diagnostic and therapeutic imaging innovations.” Pediatric imaging research under this mission is meant to encompass fetal, infant, child and adolescent patients as well as diagnostic and interventional imaging applications. The ACR–PIRmission is motivated by the problem that many research activities in the field of pediatric imaging focus on low-impact questions, thereby preventing quantum-leap advances in imaging technologies and procedures for children. Defining and understanding well-defined research priorities will help shift the research focus from these low-impact research concerns to truly transformative ones, generating highimpact research capable of attracting support from major funding agencies and enabling major advances of our field. Ongoing action items of the ACR-PIR committee include the establishment of subcommittees to pursue specific highimpact research priorities and to provide an infrastructure for trans-institutional connections for high-impact pediatric imaging research. Some goals are to improve the safety and efficacy of imaging, while other aims are to develop diseasespecific imaging biomarkers and predictive imaging. Additional areas for consideration include the development of computational informatics to analyze large imaging data sets and ensure point-of-care access to the newest innovations when feasible. As these priorities are developed and adopted, H. E. Daldrup-Link (*) Pediatric Radiology, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Stanford School of Medicine, 725 Welch Road, Stanford, CA 94305-5614, USA e-mail: H.E.Daldrup-Link@stanford.edu URL: http://daldrup-link-lab.stanford.edu/