Ronald Arenson
Ronald Arenson, MD, chair of the Department of Radiology and the Alexander R. Margulis Distinguished Professor in Radiology at UCSF, has been elected to the board of directors of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
An expert in radiology informatics, Arenson has been an RSNA member since 1973 and is a longtime volunteer of the organization. Its mission is to promote and develop the highest standards of radiology and related sciences through education and research.
Arenson will serve as the liaison-designate for the annual meeting and technology committee. He will work under Burton Drayer, MD, for one year until Drayer becomes RSNA board chairman and Arenson assumes the role of liaison.
Arenson was the RSNA second vice president in 2006. He chaired the Electronic Communications Committee (now the Radiology Informatics Committee) and has worked on several other committees.
"I hope to help RSNA achieve its strategic goals by focusing on most appropriate use of technology to make the annual meeting even more successful for our members and associated organizations and industry," Arenson told the RSNA's
Daily Bulletin. "As part of the portfolio in my liaison position, I will return to the Radiology Informatics Committee. As the former committee chair, I remain in awe of their accomplishments. I hope my experiences will help me work well with this terrific group of radiologists and informatics specialists."
As chair of the radiology department at UCSF for the last 15 years, Arenson is responsible for radiology at UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus and at UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion as well as UCSF-affiliated San Francisco General Hospital and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He also has served as president of the medical staff at UCSF.
Arenson is a course instructor and researcher, especially in the areas of radiology information systems, picture archiving and communications systems.
While working as a systems engineer for IBM in the 1960s, Arenson earned his medical degree from New York Medical College. He completed his internship at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and his diagnostic residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
After serving in the US Navy at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. At Penn, Arenson was the associate chair of clinical services in radiology, president of the medical staff and interim vice provost for computing.
He has been awarded fellowships from the American College of Medical Informatics, Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine and the American College of Radiology.
Arenson is currently president of the International Society of Strategic Studies in Radiology and the Association of University Radiologists. He is a member of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering's National Advisory Council.
