**Preface to "Selected Papers from the 3rd European Congress on Imaging Infection and Inflammation"**

Infectious diseases have always been an area of medicine, in which nuclear medicine technologies provides relevant information for differential diagnosis versus sterile inflammatory conditions and therapy decision-making. Furthermore, appropriate patient management and therapy follow-up require appropriate imaging technologies. In the past few decades, we have organized several seminars, courses, and international congresses with the primary aim of standardized, worldwide, nuclear medicine techniques for infection imaging. After this achievement, we concentrated on divulgation and collaboration with several other scientific societies to correctly position nuclear medicine procedures in diagnostic algorithms of several diseases. The 3rd European congress on "Inflammation-Infection Imaging" held in Rome in December 2019, just before the Covid lockdown, had several interactive sessions with lectures and clinical cases, each topic was treated exhaustively from radiological and nuclear medicine point of view with the participation of clinicians, experts in the field, who have contributed to round table discussions. The main goal of this congress was to provide advanced knowledge on diagnostic imaging of infection and inflammation (including bacterial imaging) with a particular focus on the methods of hybrid nuclear medicine and radiological imaging, as well as the practical aspects of imaging with labeled leukocytes and other new radiopharmaceuticals for SPECT and PET. Despite the publication of several procedural guidelines and several evidence-based guidelines on the diagnosis of infection, some topics still presented discrepancies and different points of view among specialists. We, therefore, aimed at inviting all these specialists to discuss and resolve controversies with the final publication of consensus documents. This book includes all the consensus documents generated at the end of each round table session and some of the most interesting and new papers presented at the congress. A milestone in the field of management of patients with infections.

> **Alberto Signore, Luca Maria Sconfienza** *Editors*

**Final program of Congress** 

**Monday 9th December 2019** 

08:00-09:00 Registration and poster preparation

**State-of-the-art session:** The new European guidelines **Chairmen:** Piaggio - Treglia - Schillaci

09:00-09:30 Procedural guidelines available on inflammation/infection imaging (Lazzeri, Pisa, Italy)

09:30-10:00 Diagnostic guidelines available on MSK infection imaging (Signore, Rome, Italy)


**Scientific session 1:** Imaging spine infections

**Chairmen:** Artiko - Manfrè - Bagni

11:00-11:20 Radiological imaging of spine infections: X-ray, CT and NMR (Romano, Rome, Italy)

11:20-11:40 Nuclear Medicine imaging of spine infections: WBC and FDG (Lazzeri, Pisa, Italy)


**Poster session:** Pre-clinical and clinical studies

12:30-13:00 **Chairmen:** Galli - Van de Wiele - Burroni - Wiseman

13:00-14:00 Lunch break

**Scientific session 2:** Imaging peripheral bone osteomyelitis and prosthetic joint infections


**Symposium 1:** FDG or WBC for imaging PBI and PJI? **Chairmen:** Geysens - Maes - Sathekge 16:30-16:45 Pro FDG (Treglia, Bellinzona, Switzerland) 16:45-17:00 Pro FDG (Alavi, Philadelphia, USA) 17:00-17:15 Pro WBC (Signore, Rome, Italy) 17:15-17:30 Pro WBC (Palestro, New York, USA) 17:30-18:00 Round table discussion (additional discussants: Ali Fassouli, Andrea Marzili and Lucia Retanda)

18:00-18:30 General member's assembly

20:00-23:00 Social dinner
