During the 2018 World Congress on Pain in Boston last week, the Martinos Center showcased the latest advances in research into pain and the state-of-the-art technologies that make the research possible.
Sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the World Congress on Pain welcomes scientists, health care providers, policymakers and others and gives them an opportunity to discuss the latest findings and the ways they might translate those findings into better pain management for patients around the world. The five-day meeting featured poster presentations, plenary lectures, satellite symposia and a series of special sessions—the latter including Pain Neuroimaging Night at the Martinos Center.
Hosted at two Martinos Center locations in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, the event spotlighted neuroimaging technologies at several different stations, where attendees could see the technologies up close and learn more about them from the tour leaders. The stations included MEG/EEG facilities, a combined PET/MR scanner, small- and large-bore MR scanners, the low-field MRI facilities, the radiofrequency (RF) coil lab, and the functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) lab. The tour leaders were Seppo Ahlfors, Ken Kwong, Marco Loggia, Ishtiaq Mawla, Matthew Rosen, Roberta Sclocco, Jason Stockmann and Meryem Yücel.
The evening, which saw more than 125 World Congress on Pain attendees making their way to the Navy Yard, offered a unique opportunity to engage with the broader pain research community about the advanced technologies Center investigators are developing and using, says Vitaly Napadow, director of the Center for Integrative Pain NeuroImaging (CIPNI) at the Martinos Center and organizer of the event.
“As IASP is the premier international pain conference, attracting more than 6000 pain researchers to Boston, it was very exciting to be able to host this event and show off the Center’s unique resources, giving IASP attendees the chance to interact with the investigators who use these resources day in and day out. It was a special night and we received so much positive feedback from those who attended from around the world.”