Institute of Medical Illustrators Conference 2013

Medical-Artist.com Team at Institute of Medical Illustrators
(IMI) Conference 2013, Leicester, UK
Joanna & Tim attended this years Institute of Medical Illustrators (IMI) Annual Conference in Leicester. The conference was very well attended and it was good to meet up with so many fellow medical illustrators that we met last year in Glasgow. The talks were of an extremely high standard with a very varied programme of different talks for medical illustrators interested in both the graphics and design part of the work as well as photography and videography that the IMI is renown for.

Institute of Medical Illustrators (IMI) Conference Highlights

Painting with Light – Michael Peres of ‘Big Shot’ and Rochester Institute of Technology.

This was an evening presentation at the Arts Centre at the University of Leicester which had the added bonus of curry and beers! The Big Shot team started taking photographs of large structures at night in 1987. What makes their technique stand out is the use of crowds and hand-held lights to illuminate the subject, with stunning results. Initially started as a way of getting photography students to understand how best to use flash, the Big Shot project has now evolved to be a community project in the location where they ‘land’. From buildings in just the New York state area they have now expanded their portfolio to Royal Palaces in Sweden to aircraft carriers and the Dallas Cowboys stadium.

This very interesting talk culminated in all of the IMI delegates, armed with torches, to participate in a Big Shot photo of the Leicester University Arts centre. With every person (over 100 people) allocated to a team with a job to illuminate a specific part of the photo we all switched our torches on at the sound of the horn and after a long exposure (around 2 minutes) switched them off again. The resulting photo shows not only Michael’s creativity but is a great example of what can be achieved by doing things differently and working as a team. An inspiring night and a fantastic result. We will try and post a copy of the photo on this page soon.

New Voices – Various Speakers.

The new voices section is for those IMI members who have never spoken at a conference before. The subjects were wide-ranging and engaging. All participants did themselves proud, including Jason Cadlin having to provide ‘voiceover’ for Debbie Banks who had lost her voice. Well done to Jan Sharp who won the New Voices audience vote award for her excellent talk on the ‘Show Me Where’ project helping autistic children communicate.

Life Sciences: medical research needs a new image – Professor Richard Trembath

One of the keynote presentations and it didn’t disappoint. A very informative presentation that took us from the biggest challenges facing healthcare in the Western world through to how medical illustrators need to play their role in delivering improving public health. With in-depth explanation of the Genome England project which aims to sequence the DNA of 100,000 individuals to help develop new treatments for cancer and rare genetic disorders. The presentation also covered how electronic patient records are creating a ‘big data’ project when combining genome data with image data from MRI, CT and PET scans as well as clinical photography.

Photography and Video for Personal Injury Layers – Simon Brown

Simon Brown gave an informative talk on the use of photos and video in UK personal injury cases which is related to our work in providing medical legal illustration services. The talk emphasised the improved legal outcomes for people using visual submissions to the court system because of the ease of understanding the nature and scope of injuries.

Mobile App Design & Production for Healthcare Clients – Vincent Harding

This was a particularly interesting talk for Tim who had presented on the subject of mobile device use for medical illustrators at the AMI conference earlier in the year. Vincent gave a great talk taking people through the whole story of creating an App for use in diagnosing kidney injury for clinicians in London (although it has been downloaded by a global audience). The talk was pitched perfectly to give people a great idea of the steps that need to be gone through and pitfalls to look out for without ever getting too technical.

Richard III – Using Modern Forensic Imaging Tools to Determine Cause of Death
Professor Sarah Hainsworth

As closing keynote address there was a great deal of anticipation before this talk; it did not disappoint! The remains of Richard III were discovered after a three way project between University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), Leicester City Council and the Richard III Society. They were confirmed to belong to King Richard III by using DNA comparisons with known living relatives. The ‘guts’ of this talk however was the detail of the medical and engineering imaging tools that revealed the painful end that he came to at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and the weapons used in his demise. A fascinating talk and the Richard III exhibition is on at the Guildhall in Leicester until 2014 if you want to find out more.

Our IMI Awards 2013

We are very proud to announce that the Medical-Artist.com team won a number of bronze and silver IMI awards for their work. The highlight, however, is another IMI Gold Award for Joanna, this time for an illustration of the posterior view of the spine for client Johnson & Johnson. The award was presented by the outgoing chairman Ross Milligan at the 48th Annual Awards Banquet on the Saturday evening.