World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (WC2006, Seoul)

The World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering was held at COEX in Seoul, Korea from 27th August to 1st September 2006. It was the triennial Congress of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (IUPESM), which comprises the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) and the International Organization for Medical Physics (IOMP). About 3,000 researchers working in the fields of medical physics and biomedical engineering gathered from all over the world. The primary aim of the Congress was to provide an opportunity for researchers to present their latest findings to a wider audience and prompt discussion amongst the community. The Congress provided excellent opportunities for communication among medical physicists and biomedical engineers and contributed to advance physical and engineering sciences in medicine for the benefit of improved health care. Under the theme of ‘‘Imaging the Future Medicine’’, about 2,500 papers were presented during the Congress. The scientific program included a wide range of topics in medical physics and biomedical engineering providing 25 tracks and about 250 oral and poster sessions. In addition, there were 18 symposiums, 4 workshops, 15 short courses, and 15 continuing education courses sponsored by AAPM. Ten plenary speakers and more than 100 invited speakers delivered their lectures presenting challenges and opportunities in future developments as well as latest technical advancements. The scientific program as a whole was designed to promote the fields of medical physics and biomedical engineering to maximize their contributions in improving health care throughout the world. The Congress Proceeding was published by Springer on CD-ROM and distributed during the Congress. After the Congress, the Scientific Program Committee asked session chairs to recommend papers to be included in a special issue of Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing. About 140 papers were prepared in extended form and carefully reviewed for this special issue before publication. The submitted manuscripts were treated by the editorial team as regular submission. No additional selection criteria such as based on topic or region of origin were applied. The usual high standards of quality criteria as indicated by our reviewers were used. Primarily due to the page limit of the special issue, only nineteen papers were finally chosen. The selection nicely demonstrates the areas that are important in biomedical engineering and Medical Physics at this moment and we would like to identify. The first four papers in this issue deal with cellular and molecular engineering [2, 6, 13, 14]. Much is expected from this area of science for better understanding of disease, development of new means of diagnosis and advances of novel therapies. Applications of biomedical engineering skills to these new developments are urgently needed. The Congress was a well-appreciated combined initiative of medical physicists and biomedical engineers and we are happy to have four excellent papers highly relevant to diagnosis and treatment of cancer [7, 8, 11, 18]. Model development is very important to both the medical physicists and biomedical E. J. Woo Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea