RSNA 2021 Plenary Lecture

An internationally known advocate for the monitoring and control of medical radiation exposure, James A. Brink, MD, is chair of the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospitals, radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, chief of enterprise radiology for Mass General Brigham health system, and the Juan M. Taveras Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, all in Boston.

In his lecture, Dr. Brink will discuss the importance of health care stakeholders worldwide understanding the critical role that radiology plays in advancing quality care at an affordable cost for disease prevention, detection, management, therapy and monitoring.

“If we enter the value-based healthcare arena wholeheartedly, our future state is one in which radiologists are champions for health equity and are recognized for democratizing their services while embracing innovation that brings imaging advances to the population at large,” Dr. Brink says. “Personalized imaging care integrates diagnostic data from all sources and leverages predictive analytics to anticipate and remedy future decrements in health and well-being.”

Dr. Brink is a past president of the American Roentgen Ray Society and the American College of Radiology. He is currently president of the International Society for Strategic Studies in Radiology and vice chair of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

He has been recognized with the American Roentgen Ray Society’s gold medal and is an honorary member of the European Society of Radiology, the Japanese Radiological Society, the Chinese Society of Radiology, the Italian Society of Medical Radiology, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the International Organization for Medical Physics. Dr. Brink was recognized by his alma mater, Purdue University, with the Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer award. He was also elected Distinguished Emeritus Member by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements.

Dr. Brink earned a BS degree in electrical engineering at Purdue University and his medical degree at Indiana University before completing his residency and fellowship at MGH. During his fellowship Dr. Brink received an RSNA Research Fellow Grant. He began his career at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he rose to the rank of associate professor before joining the faculty at Yale University in 1997. He served as chair of the Yale Department of Diagnostic Radiology from 2006 to 2013.