SPR Pioneer Award for Taylor Chung, MD, Honoring 20 Years of Hands-on Pediatric CMR Teaching
Taylor Chung, MD, is one of the co-founders and co-directors of the hands-on Basic Cardiac MR Course and Advanced Symposium in Pediatric Cardiovascular Imaging offered by The Society for Pediatric Radiology (SPR) for two decades. Taylor and his colleagues Shi-Joon Yoo, MD of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and J. A. Gordon Culham, MD of British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, were named Pioneer Awardees by The Society for Pediatric Radiology in April 2025, honoring their foresight in pediatric cardiac CT and MRI and their leadership in educating hundreds of pediatric cardiovascular imagers over the past 20 years.
Taylor said, “The three of us feel very honored and humbled to receive this award. This teaching course started organically and developed a life of its own. SPR has supported us since the inception, and we are most grateful.”
"We're extremely proud to celebrate Dr. Taylor Chung as he receives the SPR's Pioneer Award. His foundational work as a clinician and educator continues to advance cardiac CT and MRI for pediatric patients here at BCH-Oakland and internationally,” said Raymond Sze, MD, Radiologist-in-Chief. “What started as a niche idea for a pediatric MR training course more than 20 years has become the SPR's must-attend Basic Course and Advanced Symposium, and has influenced, in no small part, many pediatric radiologists practicing today. Congratulations to Dr. Chung on his accomplishments."
The seeds for the course were sown during a dinner conversation between Taylor and Joon in Houston. Inspired by a hands-on basic adult CMR course at the Texas Heart Institute, Joon envisioned a similar, yet uniquely tailored, educational opportunity for his fellow pediatric radiologists. This vision, born from a desire to empower the next generation of imagers, ultimately led to the development of the course and symposium.
In 2001, pediatric CMR was a niche topic when compared to adult CMR and was sparingly covered in the annual meetings of radiology and cardiology societies. Not content with this, Taylor hoped to provide a concentrated course in pediatric cardiac MR to jump start interested pediatric radiologists in building their CMR clinical service at their respective institutions to address growing clinical demands.
Taylor began planning the first SPR Hands-on Basic CMR Course while he was working in the Department of Diagnostic Imaging at Texas Children’s Hospital. Joon, Gordon, and Taylor designed the course to have introductory lectures on MR techniques/MR physics, congenital heart anatomy, surgical procedures, and cardiovascular hemodynamics. The 15 attendees were divided into three small groups to rotate in interactive sessions studying MR scanning techniques during live examinations at the MR scanner, hands-on sessions for post-processing MR data, and discussion sessions on MR examinations completed during scanning and post-processing sessions.
Taylor said, “It is incredibly satisfying to see the growth of CMR within SPR. What was once an ad-hoc task force in 2000 of five SPR members to gauge the interest in pediatric cardiac imaging within the Society has developed into a full committee, currently with 23 members in 2025.
Over the years, the Basic Course and the Advanced Symposium gradually gained traction among both radiologists and cardiologists in the international pediatric cardiovascular imaging community. The Course and Symposium is affectionately known in this community as the “annual SPR meeting”. The Basic Course program remains quite similar each year whereas the program of the Advanced Symposium changes from year to year. The 20th SPR Cardiac MR Hands-on Course and 18th SPR Advanced Symposium in Pediatric Cardiovascular Imaging was held in October 2024 at the Hospital for Sick Children. To mark the 20th year, the organizing committee of the Course and Symposium introduced an annual keynote lecture into the program of the Symposium and nominated Taylor to be the 1st keynote speaker. The title of the keynote lecture was “The Evolution of Pediatric CMR Techniques”.
Taylor remarked, “It’s been wonderful for the three of us to observe the growth of our next generation of cardiac imagers. Many of these imagers were attendees of our Basic Course. They continue to advance our field and enhance the collaboration between radiology and cardiology. The future is extremely bright.”
Read Chung’s invited account of the CMR course in Pediatric Radiology.
By Francis Horan