OIA Conference
24th Annual Scientific Symposium
21st/22nd November 2008

24th OIA Annual Conference 2008 held in the Holiday Inn - Bolton

This year's 24th annual OIA conference was held at the Holiday Inn, near Bolton Centre. There was a good turn out of delegates for this event, and with an equally enthusiastic supporting group of Trade Exhibitors displaying the latest technology. With the programme looking full of informative and knowledge gulping activity, and with the evening meal and entertainment also on the horizon it looked like a good old knees up would soon be upon us. Whilst the Holiday Inn looked rather like any usual Holiday Inn venue, deep within its interior we were to discover an amazing medieval hall where we were to host our Annual Banquet.

[The conference programme is available here » ]

After the initial AGM meeting at 10:30am and the opening of the trade exhibition, the conference was formally opened with a welcome address from Mike Geall and Monique Hope-Ross. The trade exhibition itself consisted of the following companies, Nidek Medical Instruments, Carl Zeiss Ltd, Grafton Optical Ltd, Haag-Streit UK, Spectrum, Topcon GB, and Visbion. They displayed a variety of imaging technology for us all to interact with and we received demonstrations from helpful and informative sales representatives alike.

On Day 2: Guest speaker from Professor Vernon, (here receiving guest speaker gift)  gave a lecture on detecting Glaucoma while screening for diabetic retinopathy. Click image to open gallery.

The afternoon session was chaired by Monique Hope-Ross and commenced with Nachiketa Acharya presenting an overview of setting up a VEGF service. This was followed by Mohammed Musadiq's presentation on the use of blue light in ARMD. Whilst this technique was considered a new method it was fascinating to reflect that we had all been using these filters on our fundus cameras for many years but with little effect. Shortly following was Antonio Calcagni who spoke on Multispectral image analysis and to conclude the session Monique Hope-Ross gave an informative talk on her experience of Lucentis treatment in practice.

After a short tea and coffee break Vikki Mcbain gave an absolutely fascinating talk on Pattern Dystrophy using auto fluorescence followed by Venkat Kotamarti's talk on the Management of Diabetic maculopathy. Venkat displayed some brilliant slides on OCT examples which gave us all a good lesson in diagnosing from OCT images. To round up proceedings Grant Duncan from Medalytix gave us a historical introduction to the computer analysis of digital retinal images and how his software could change and make more efficient grading processes within Diabetic retinopathy.

The OIA medieval banquet

The OIA medieval banquet. Click image to open gallery.

The evening celebrations started at 7:00 pm with a rather sinister looking medieval potion tasting competition followed by the banquet in the rather grand medieval hall. Most delegates had a made a fabulous effort with fancy dress, there were jesters, knights and monks (Fryer Tucks), servants, elegantly dressed ladies and lady boys. Richard Hildred emerged with pigtails, an amazing chest and a lovely pair of tights! The food itself was also delightful, with the minimal edge you would expect from a medieval spread, a presentation of soup followed by chicken, hog roast and an assortment of vegetables, followed by desert. This was all accompanied by free flowing wine, red and white and a good time was had by all. [ see image gallery below » ]

Following the meal our President Miss Monique Hope-Ross awarded the trophies for the Zeiss Competition and the overall winner was apparently the same person as last year, none other than Mr Richard Hancock from Liverpool. He wins an all expenses paid trip to the United States for his Case Report presentation. These awards were closely followed by Honorary Life Fellowships of OIA being awarded to Mr Mike Geall and Gerry Heath who both have given distinguished service to OIA over the years.

The entertainment consisted of 3 medieval musicians playing ambient music with an assortment of instruments, in which after the meal they followed by interacting with the diners performing some jolly dancing.

22nd November, day 2

Monique Hope Ross, Chair of the AMD session, pictured here receiving her gift from Professor Murray.

Morning had come, and with hangovers in full effect, a full breakfast was waiting for all in the restaurant. Shortly after Ann Bolton (OIA Chairman) got things underway with the opening remarks, along with Prof Steve Vernon and his Symposium on Glaucoma.

Paul Crompton got things started with his talk on the use of stereo photography in the management of Glaucoma and Glaucoma suspects and Simon Longstaff then took the reins explaining the use of HRT in the “Virtual Glaucoma Clinic. Professor Vernon came back to give an overview and interactive talk on detecting Glaucoma while screening for diabetic retinopathy, and whilst most of the delegates tried to hide behind their chairs whilst Steve asked his Quiz questions, his presentation was greatly enjoyed by all. Steve's session was concluded by Simon Walker from Leighton Hospital with his talk on GDX, asking the question, can the light be switched on in the Glaucoma tunnel?

After a short coffee break the OIA guest speaker Professor Phillip Murray gave a fantastic talk on ‘Everything you also wanted to know about Uveitis but were afraid to ask'. Professor Murray explained his subject in a most brilliant way and I am sure we are all experts now in this field.

Guest lecture from Professor Murray : Everything you also wanted to know about Uveitis but were afraid to ask.

After lunch the final session of the day was begun by Chris Mody who gave an important talk on modernising scientific careers. Whilst this did not cover technical issues it gave us all an insight into our career development and what needs to happen in the future. Ian Pearce then took the podium and gave another brilliant talk on ‘Imaging the diabetic patient using OCT. Ian also terrified the audience with his own version of testing our diagnostic skills which everyone ultimately found most helpful.

Sandy Taylor then spoke about “Ivan the terrible” and how her hospital copes with this national drug study (IVAN). We then moved onto a major session on Ultrasound hosted by Rona Owen and Hatem Atta. Rona and Hatem gave three brilliant presentations on this subject and clearly outlined the fact that traditional Ultrasound will never be replaced by OCT.

The final presentation of the conference was by Mr Manoj Kulshrestha who gave an interesting view on what the patient actually witnesses visually during an eye operation. He also showed some interesting slides of how some of the famous artists from the past saw the world in various stages of their own personal cataract growth.

The conference was performed in good spirits and much fun was had by all, the delegation consisted of many old faces and some new, overall it was well executed and shows the future and technology within the medical ophthalmic imaging field. It is clear that this is advancing all the time, and it can only be seen as an exciting time for us all.

Thanks go out to all the speakers and everyone who attended in making the 24th annual OIA conference a successful one.

OIA 2007 Conference Image Gallery

Click on any of the images below to open the image gallery (large images).

The king addresses his subjects!		Queen Gill
Phil the jester		King and Subject
Knights potion		King Mike with choice of potions
Trade members dressed to impress
Peasants toast the king!
King Henry makes an entrance		Three's a crowd
Evening entertainment

Mr Ian Pearce (right) consultant ophthalmologist, St Paul's Eye Unit, Liverpool receiving his prize for best presentation, a Nikon D40 SLR camera, from Mr Richard Ball of Topcon, the sponsors of this year's event. Click to open the image gallery.

 

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