2024 Fall OAMRS Multidisciplinary Breast Imaging Symposium

Speaker Information

Dr. Meredith Lynch, MD, FRCPC, Associate Professor, McMaster University. Dr. Meredith Lynch is the Regional Breast Imaging Lead for OBSP in the Hamilton, Burlington, Haldimand, Norfolk, Brant region. She completed fellowship in Breast and Cross Sectional Imaging at McMaster University and is currently a Breast and Body Imaging Radiologist at Juravinski Hospital, Hamilton Health Sciences. Dr. Lynch is Associate Professor at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario with a passion for teaching undergraduate students, residents and fellows as well as interests in quality improvement and clinical guidelines.

Dr. Sunil Kumar Suguru Laxman, MD, Product Sales Executive, Siemens Healthineers. Dr. Sunil Kumar Suguru Laxman is currently the Product Sales Executive for MRI at Siemens Healthineers, responsible for the Canadian market. He is a medical doctor by profession, and has had the privilege of working with Siemens since 2004. Over the years, Dr. Laxman has had the opportunity to work across multiple countries, gaining a wealth of experience in the medical imaging field. He is excited to share insights into the advancements in MR imaging, particularly in breast care, and how Siemens Healthineers is driving innovation to support better patient outcomes.

Dr. Paula Gordon, OC, OBC, MD, FRCPC, FSBI, Clinical Professor of Radiology, University of British Columbia. Dr. Paula Gordon is Clinical Professor of Radiology at UBC. Her research in 1995 was the first to show that ultrasound could find cancers missed on mammograms. This has led to a paradigm change in the management of screening women with dense breasts that began in the USA in 2009, but is now spreading to Canada, the UK, Asia, Australia and Europe. She volunteers as Medical Advisor to DenseBreastsCanada.ca and DenseBreast-Info.org. Her goal is that as many breast cancers as possible be detected early, to give women more options for less aggressive therapy, and to reduce breast cancer mortality. She’s received numerous awards, including, among many others, the Honorary Alumnus award by UBC, and the Specialist of the Year Award by the Royal College. In 2022, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Stephanie Schofield, MRT(R), DI Quality and Stewardship Lead, Nova Scotia Health. Stephanie Schofield has been a MRT for more than 30 years. She started her career in general imaging and mammography and worked as a quality control technologist for over 20 years. She works with Densitas, as a consultant and recently started a provincial position as DI Quality and Stewardship for Nova Scotia Health. Stephanie has been involved with the CAMRT, the Canadian Organization of Medical physicists and she was the first technologist on the Canadian Society of Breast Imaging committee.

Lyndsay Simmons, MRT (MR), (R). PhD Candidate, McMaster University. Lyndsay Simmons graduated from Charles Sturt University and holds a Masters degree in Medical Radiation Sciences with a specialty in Computed Tomography. She is also a certified MRI technologist and is currently working towards her PhD in Radiation Sciences at McMaster University.

Anju Tomar, MHA, BS, ARDMS, RVT, National Applications Leader ABUS, GE Healthcare. Anju Tomar has been a sonographer since 1994, registered in Abdomen, Breast, OB/Gyn, Neurosonography, and Vascular Technology. In her current role she lives and breathes all things ABUS. She is extremely passionate about educating women about breast density. She believes in early detection of cancer and making a difference in the lives of women with dense breast tissue. During her 23 years at GE, 10 of them have been spent gaining experience across everything it takes to build a successful breast imaging screening program, inclusive of: sales, clinical applications, marketing, product development, program implementation, education, IT/Workflow, service, and project management. Her passion and purpose is to make ultrasound and adjunct screening modality accessible to every woman that needs it.

Dr. Martin Yaffe, PhD, CM, FRSC, DSc (Hon), FAAPM, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. Dr. Martin Yaffe is a medical physicist and imaging scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and Professor of Medical Biophysics at The University of Toronto. His research over the past 40 years has focused on the earlier detection, diagnosis and characterization of cancer. His lab pioneered the development of digital mammography and contrast-enhanced mammography, now used worldwide, and in collaboration with epidemiologist, Dr. Norman Boyd and multiple other collaborators, contributed to the understanding of breast density in its dual roles as a risk factor for breast cancer and in masking its detection in mammograms. He has a strong interest in breast cancer screening and has refined and used microsimulation models to study its optimizations, the phenomenon of over-detection and the effect of COVID disruptions on breast cancer outcomes. He is a member of the leadership team of the TMIST breast tomosynthesis trial (MAC-22/ ECOG-ACRIN 1151) and serves as its Canadian Study Chair. Over his career, he has been committed to improvement of image quality in mammography. He has chaired working groups of ICRU and IAEA, focusing on mammography quality and his group has developed custom phantoms and test procedures for that purpose, and created specialized QC programs for both the DMIST and TMIST trials. He created the Biomarker Imaging Research Laboratory (BIRL) to apply imaging science to the quantitative analysis of pathologic and radiomic cancer biomarkers to improve their value for use in prognosis and prediction. He is Co-Director of the Imaging Research Program of The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He was inducted as a Member of The Order of Canada in 2015 and as Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada in 2021.