David Koff
Chairman and Co-Founder
- Mississauga ON CANADA
For the last 20 years, David Koff's research has centered on the electronic communication and workflow integration of medical images.
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Biography
David Koff, MD FRCPC FCAR, is Professor Emeritus at McMaster University, past Chief and Chair of the Department of Radiology. He is the founder and director of MIIRCAM, the Medical Imaging Informatics Research Centre at McMaster, leading research projects on radiation risk, validation of technology and applications of Artificial Intelligence to medical imaging. He is Chair of Canada Safe Imaging, part of the international radiation safety campaigns.
For the last 20 years, Dr. Koff’s research has centered on the electronic communication and workflow integration of medical images, and he co-developed the Canadian standards on lossy compression. He is a co-founder of RealTime Medical, a Canadian teleradiology and software development company.
His current research interests are about Artificial Intelligence for the aggregation of imaging and medical data. He has been a co-founder of IHE Canada (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) and is a member of the IHE section of the Medical Informatics committee at RSNA. He is past co-Chair of the IHE International Radiology Planning Committee.
Dr. Koff has been organizing MIIT, the Medical Imaging Informatics and Teleradiology conference in Canada, for the past 16 years. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Association of Radiologists and a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Before his appointment at McMaster, Dr. Koff held positions as a staff radiologist and research associate at Sunnybrook Health Sciences in Toronto, assistant professor at the University of Toronto, and staff radiologist at the Montreal Heart Institute at the Université de Montréal. Before coming to Canada, Dr. Koff graduated in medicine and radiology from Université Paris V René Descartes in Paris, France. He managed a large radiology practice for 18 years. Dr. Koff is fellowship-trained in chest and body ultrasound and has a special interest in ultrasound.
Industry Expertise
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
MIIT 2022 conference merges with SIIM
Canadian Healthcare Technology online
2022-02-02
For 15 years, the Medical Imaging Informatics and Teleradiology (MIIT) conference has provided Imaging Informatics education through an annual one or two-day meeting in Ontario. Through talks from thought leaders in Canada, as well as the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, attendees learned about the state of the art in Medical Imaging Informatics practice and research. Many of the talks were focused on subjects or perspectives that are uniquely Canadian, such as the use of regional Diagnostic Imaging Repositories (DIRs).
New Canadian app working to 'cut through the information clutter' of COVID-19
CTV News online
2020-09-02
RTM chairman and co-founder Dr. David Koff told CTVNews.ca that one of the greatest threats the public faces amid the pandemic is misinformation. "I don't think we have seen such a major public health crisis before with so much confusion, and also so much political interference in health messages," Koff said in a phone interview on Thursday.
Real Time Medical Launches AI-Enabled App to Deliver Peer-Reviewed Data and Advice to Manage the COVID-19 Pandemic
Newswire online
2020-09-02
"During this global pandemic, the need for credible, verifiable scientific information and advice is shared by medical professionals, policy-makers and the public, but it's the public that is facing the biggest threat from misinformation, bad science and unsound advice," said Dr. David Koff, RTM's Chairman and Co-Founder. "Using the COVID KE app, you're able to simultaneously scan multiple health data sources from around the world in seconds, which then also combines those findings with the latest recommendations from healthcare professionals around the world to make the best decisions for your family – on the go."
Education
University of Toronto
Fellowship
Chest and Body Imaging
Université René Descartes (Paris V)
Residency
Radiology
Université de Paris
M.D.
Affiliations
- Canada Safe Imaging : Co-Founder and Chair, 2015 - Present
- MIIRC@M : Founder and Director, 2008 - Present
- Real Time Medical : Co-Founder, 2006 - Present
Links
Languages
- English
- French
Event Appearances
The importance and challenges of medical data privacy protection in the era of the fourth industrial revolution
IGF2021 Online
2021-12-06
Availability
- Keynote
- Moderator
Patents
System and method for management and distribution of diagnostic imaging
8724867
2014A method of distributing an image study to a chosen image reader is disclosed having steps of receiving an image study from an image producer at a third party communication module, sending a receive notification message to a messaging layer, sending a study available notification message from the messaging layer to a workload distribution engine wherein the available notification message includes extracted image study information pulled from study headers of the image study, identifying image study rules from the extracted image study information, applying an image study complexity to the image study based on the image study rules, calculating image reader complexities for a plurality of image readers subscribed to receive image studies from the image producer, each of the image reader complexities calculated using the image study complexity and an Image reader profile assigned to each of the plurality of accredited image readers, selecting the chosen image reader from the plurality of image readers based on the image reader complexities, assigning the image study to the chosen image reader, and displaying the image study on a user interface to the chosen image reader.
Articles
MIIT 2022 conference merges with SIIM
Canadian Healthcare TechnologyKISSIMMEE, Fla.
2022-02-02
For 15 years, the Medical Imaging Informatics and Teleradiology (MIIT) conference has provided Imaging Informatics education through an annual one or two-day meeting in Ontario. Through talks from thought leaders in Canada, as well as the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, attendees learned about the state of the art in Medical Imaging Informatics practice and research. Many of the talks were focused on subjects or perspectives that are uniquely Canadian, such as the use of regional Diagnostic Imaging Repositories (DIRs).
COVID-Net CT-2: Enhanced Deep Neural Networks for Detection of COVID-19 from Chest CT Images Through Bigger, More Diverse Learning
arXiv preprint2021The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage on, with multiple waves causing substantial harm to health and economies around the world. Motivated by the use of CT imaging at clinical institutes around the world as an effective complementary screening method to RT-PCR testing, we introduced COVID-Net CT, a neural network tailored for detection of COVID-19 cases from chest CT images as part of the open source COVID-Net initiative. However, one potential limiting factor is restricted quantity and diversity given the single nation patient cohort used. In this study, we introduce COVID-Net CT-2, enhanced deep neural networks for COVID-19 detection from chest CT images trained on the largest quantity and diversity of multinational patient cases in research literature.
Using Medical Imaging Effective Dose in Deep Learning Models: Estimation and Evaluation
IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences2020Accurately estimating patient exposure is a fundamental concern when modeling the radiation risk from medical imaging. Inaccurate estimation techniques produce misleading instances that have a cascading effect on the performance of risk models. A commonly used method of estimating exposure is using mean effective dose (ED) values from the literature. However, the predictive power of literature values to impute patients ED has not been investigated. In this article, we present a comparative analysis between two methods to estimate ED for computed tomography (CT) and X-ray (XR) scans: 1) mean EDs from the literature and 2) calculated dose estimates from imaging scans using ED tools. We also used adversarial machine learning to demonstrate how the difference between estimation methods impacts a proof-of-concept deep learning model.
Canada Safe Imaging: Promoting Radiation Safety in Healthcare Institutions
Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal2021With pressing matters such as the growing penetration of Artificial Intelligence in our practices and the COVID-19 pandemic, which had such an impact on our lives, radiation safety may not be perceived as a high priority. But even as technology is improving and the individual doses delivered to patients are decreasing, the overall population’s collective dose in Canada keeps increasing. Therefore, it remains our role as radiologists to ensure the appropriate utilization of ionizing radiations in our departments and clinics continues to be addressed.
Expanding the reach of global health radiology via the world’s first medical hybrid airship: A SWOT analysis
Journal of Global Health2020Radiology is a specialty in medicine that uses various medical imaging (MI) modalities, such as x-ray radiography, computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to produce and interpret images for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease [1]. MI is a core health care technology, listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the six essential building blocks for health systems to operate smoothly [2]. Additionally, access to radiology services can influence six of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): maternal health (3.1), child health (3.2), communicable diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (3.3), non-communicable diseases such as cancer (3.4), road traffic accidents (3.6), and universal health coverage (3.8) [3]. However, three to four billion individuals worldwide lack access to basic radiology services and other important health care services [4].
An Environmental Scan of the National and Provincial Diagnostic Reference Levels in Canada for Common Adult Computed Tomography Scans
Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal2019Several regulatory bodies have agreed that low-dose radiation used in medical imaging is a weak carcinogen that follows a linear, non-threshold model of cancer risk. While avoiding radiation is the best course of action to mitigate risk, computed tomography (CT) scans are often critical for diagnosis. In addition to the as low as reasonably achievable principle, a more concrete method of dose reduction for common CT imaging exams is the use of a diagnostic reference level (DRL). This paper examines Canada's national DRL values from the recent CT survey and compares it to published provincial DRLs as well as the DRLs in the United Kingdom and the United States of America for the 3 most common CT exams: head, chest, and abdomen/pelvis. Canada compares well on the international scale, but it should consider using more electronic dose monitoring solutions to create a culture of dose optimization.
