Ninth International Conference on the Ultrasonic Measurement and Imaging of Tissue Elasticity ©

The international participation in the Conference includes virtually all global entities engaged in research, development, commercialization and practice in the field. This year, we have returned to the 2006 ITEC venue at Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Last year's Conference feedback was again unanimous in the desire for continuation of the tutorial series. We are pleased that Drs. Tim Salcudean (CA) and Guy Cloutier (CA) have agreed to present this year's exciting tutorials on prostate elastography and its applications, and the challenges of potentially high impact clinical imaging methods in non-invasive vascular elastography. We are also continuing last year's popular format of the formal Poster Session, where each presenter has the opportunity to give a brief oral summary of his/her poster, and we thank Drs. Michael Richards (US) and Richard Lopata (NL) for their enthusiastic leadership in conducting this event. This year we continue to attract a rapidly growing number of clinical papers. Following on last year, we continue to have three clinical sessions and one cardiovascular session. Last year's Student Best Paper Presentations and Awards session was a resounding success. Due to the generous sponsorship from Ultrasonix Medical Corporation of Vancouver, Canada, the Conference will again deliver Student Best Paper certificates and cash awards to the authors of papers that have been judged as most meritorious through independent review cycles. On Saturday afternoon, we will have a special session in which the eight finalists will present their abstracts. The final awardees will be announced during the Conference dinner on Sunday evening. We welcome and thank Medison Co. Ltd (Seoul, Korea) as a new sponsor of the Conference; this year's printing of the Conference Proceedings book is generously sponsored by Medison. This year we welcome two new exhibitors to the Conference: Supersonic Imagine, Inc. (US) and E&I, Limited (US). We would like to thank all the new and returning delegates, reviewers and session chairs for their continuing support of the Conference. Special thanks are in order to our enthusiastic support staff that has worked above and beyond. Ms. Christina Andrews of the Conference Secretariat's office has coordinated the logistics, correspondence and financial aspects of the Conference.; Ms. Karen Ophir volunteered to design the Conference's artwork, publications and the new web site, negotiate the hotel contract, organize the scientific program and edit all abstracts and compile the Conference Proceedings; Ms. Charlene Waldron has volunteered to …