Highlights of the EANM Congress Barcelona 2009: increasing our impact in diagnostic imaging

The EANM Congress 2009 took place in Barcelona from 10 to 14 October under the chairmanship of Dr. Martin-Comin. As always, the meeting was successful with high-level scientific content and a great number of participants. In spite of the economic crisis, industry made an important contribution presenting new revolutionary equipment and tracers, and in particular the pharmaceutical industry has increased its involvement in our speciality. This article is a brief summary of the major scientific contributions presented at the annual congress 2009, highlighting the fields of nuclear medicine at a higher level of development, including those with an increased clinical impact (especially oncology, but also cardiology, neurology and other clinical sciences), new detectors and multimodality imaging, and those fields showing important progress, including radiochemistry and pharmacy (with the development of new tracers and increased collaboration of industry). (orig.)