Dear friends and colleagues,
Our society was founded in 2016. Many of you have been with us since the beginning. Since those times, we shared many good moments, a lot of great research and we have seen an incredible rise of Weightbearing CT technology which has certainly become the new standard in the Foot and Ankle.
Those first 5 years have been incredibly exciting and we have been fortunate to witness it from the inside amongst you all: a growing community of active and passionate people, the members of the International Weight Bearing CT Society. Thank you for being present and helping us grow.
However, the coming five years will be something entirely different. Weight Bearing CT is now becoming mainstream and 2022 will be a turning point in the way it is growingly being integrated in our daily practice.
First, we will see an exponential interest from our knee and hip colleagues, as the WBCT moves up the standing human skeleton towards its upper extremity, and our society will open up to them as they join in the research effort to redefine the way we see bone and joint systems.
Secondly, we are already witnessing the creation of many A.I. based systems to help us perform automatic measurements. Softwares are being created every day to achieve this! We, as the iWBCTs have created the standards committee including eminent academic members, who’s mission it is to investigate and validate 3D measurement methods in collaboration with the industry, so that in the future, all of us can work on common grounds, whatever software or hardware platform we are using.
Thirdly, we have been joined through our partnership program by implant manufacturers, and this is a big breakthrough for us as a society but also for the technology. This shows that, as anticipated, 3D weight bearing imaging is the raw material which is required by the industry in order to operate the major shift in orthopedics, towards customized surgery. In a very near future, WBCT datasets will be the entry point into planning, optimizing more and more surgeries and manufacturing more and more implants and surgical devices.
It is a great opportunity, and I am very grateful and excited to become the third President of our society at the brink of this pivot year. It will be two years full of projects and challenges, not the least being to organise our first live, independent meeting. Stay tuned to learn more about that! It will also be a challenge to walk in the footsteps of Alexej Barg and Martinus Richter, our two former Presidents, who have led us to where we are today and under who’s mentorship we remain. Let us not forget also our historical industrial Partners, and the newcomers, all listed below, without which we could not exist. The great team we have on the renewed board remains ever more active and we are pleased to welcome Alexander Leme Godoy-Santos, who is the first international member to join the board since the founding team of 2016. His outstanding track record will definitely help us push through our great projects.
In conclusion, I especially want to thank our members, partners and secretariat for joining and supporting the International WBCT Society. We need you more than ever so go out there and talk about us, motivate people, colleagues, researchers, fellows, mentors, to join the society. Weight Bearing CT will improve our diagnostics and our treatments for our patients and for us: let us drive this innovation forward, together. Best regards to all,
François Lintz,
President International WBCT Society
