By Sabrina Brigadoi and Alessandro Torricelli
From June 13thto June 15th the first Joint Italian-French Workshop on “Cerebral Oximetry and functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (ifNIRS2018)” took place in Milan at Politecnico di Milano.
The workshop, organized by Alessandro Torricelli together with Marco Ferrari, Fredric Dehais and Stephane Perrey, aimed at gathering researchers and clinicians working in the field of NIRS and fNIRS.
More than 90 participants were present from several European countries: in addition to those from Italy and France we had participants from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom (as well as a handful of participants from Iran and Japan who were visiting students and scientists at Politecnico di Milano).
Before the workshop a training course was organized with the support of leading companies in the field of cerebral oximetry (Masimo, Nonin, Hemophotonics) and fNIRS (Artinis, Biopac, NIRx). Thanks to our sponsors, we were able to offer lunch and an evening reception.
We had give invited speakers:
- Turgut Durduran, Head of Medical Optics group, ICFO, Barcelona (Spain)
- Ann-Christine Ehlis, Head of Psychophysiology & Optical Imaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Tuebingen
- Monica Fumagalli, U.O. di Neonatologia e Terapia Intensiva Neonatale, Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche e di Comunità, Università degli Studi di Milano, Fondazione IRCCS Cà Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico
- Leonardo Gottin, Dipartimento di Scienze Chirurgiche Odontostomatologiche e Materno-Infantili, Università degli Studi di Verona
- Nadege Roche-Labarbe, Université de Caen Normandie | UNICAEN · UFR de Psychologie
In addition to the invited talks, contributed talks (21) and posters (13) were presented. A round table on guidelines and standardization for NIRS and fNIRS field closed the event.
Across the three days, an open atmosphere (and good food!) led to nice discussions among professors, students, young researchers and potential users of these techniques.
We plan to repeat this stimulating experience in the coming year in another European country following the same format (including no registration fee).
Further information on the workshop are provided on the website: https://www.eko.polimi.it/index.php/ifnirs2018/ifNIRS2018/index”