2025 Speaker Biography

Dr Anna Sharman is a consultant radiologist at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. Her specialist interest is thoracic radiology, particularly early detection of lung cancer. Anna has co-developed the nationally recognised, award winning, RAPID programme at Wythenshawe hospital, described as an exemplar service for the delivery of the National Optimum Lung Cancer Pathway (NOLCP). She has set up a highly successful tertiary lung biopsy service taking referrals from across the region.

Dr Sharman became the Director of Radiology for the £4.2M North Manchester Lung Health Check/Lung Cancer Screening programme following the success of the pilot in 2016 and since 2019 has been the Responsible Radiologist for the Greater Manchester Targeted Lung Health Check programme/ Lung Cancer Screening, which is now part of the NHS England’s pilot programme.

She is the clinical lead for the Annalise CXR AI clinical decision support tool for MFT which went live across the whole trust in October 2024, part of the wider Greater Manchester initiative. MFT was awarded £500k, part of the £3.2M awarded to GM from the NHSE Artificial Intelligence Diagnostic Fund.

She sits on the steering committee for BTOG and has been on the NHSE Lung Cancer Screening Advisory Group. 

Dr Allanah Barker is a consultant Radiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. She completed a Fellowship in Cardiothoracic Radiology at Royal Papworth Hospital and was appointed as a Consultant Radiologist with a sub-specialty interest in Cardiothoracic radiology in 2019.

She has a special interest in Thoracic imaging and intervention, in particular in oncology, and is trained in Endobronchial Ultrasound and Endoscopic Ultrasound for full staging of lung cancer. Dr. Barker is responsible radiologist for lung cancer screening in Cambridge and is an advisory editor for Clinical Radiology.

Ben Holloway has been a cardiothoracic radiologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham since 2007. He is known as a leader in cardiac imaging, being former Treasurer for the British Society of Cardiac Imaging and contributing to national guidelines and cardiac CT trials. However his clinical work is equally focused on thoracic imaging and intervention as a core member of the lung cancer and interstitial lung disease MDT. He is a previous travelling Professor for the British Society of Thoracic Imaging. He is an assistant editor for British Journal of Radiology and Clinical Radiology. He is academy lead for cardiac imaging for the West Midlands.

Joseph Jacob Honorary Consultant Radiologist, UCLH, UCL Respiratory, Centre for Medical Image Computing, University College London, London, UK Joseph qualified in medicine from Imperial College London. He then worked for Médecins Sans Frontières for 2 years in Sudan and India, before undertaking radiology training at Kings College Hospital, London and Auckland City Hospital, New Zealand.

In 2016, Dr Jacob completed a MD(Res) at Imperial College London under Professor David Hansell at the Royal Brompton Hospital, and in 2018, was awarded successive Wellcome Trust Fellowships. His current research, based at the Centre for Medical Image Computing at University College London and the UCL Respiratory department relates to the use of computer-analysis of CT imaging in various lung diseases, with a primary focus on fibrosing lung diseases.

Dr Jacob has co-authored over 175 papers, won national and international awards for his work, and was awarded the National Heart and Lung Institute prize for the best thesis of 2017.

Professor Sherwood Burge I have been a consultant respiratory physician in Birmingham and Solihull since 1980, developing the superregional service for occupational lung diseases. In 1999 John Reynolds persuaded me to coordinate one of the first ILD MDTs with him and Simon Trotter (histopathology), as I was the closest thing to an ILD physician at the time and many ILDs have an occupational or environmental origin. I finally retired in 2024 but continue with the ILD MDTs. I have investigated many outbreaks of lung diseases and will present some with radiological interest.

Dr James Eaden was appointed as a respiratory consultant in 2022, following training in South Yorkshire and a research sabbatical in Sheffield (where he attained his PhD). He is based at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield. His expertise is in interstitial lung disease, and he has a broad clinical and research portfolio, including several journal publications.

Dr Katharine Tweed Consultant Cardiothoracic Radiologist Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge

Following clinical radiology training in Oxford and fellowships in Papworth and Toronto, Katharine has been practising as a consultant radiologist in a tertiary cardiothoracic hospital since 2013. Katharine specialises in multimodality imaging involving thoracic oncology, cardiac and lung transplant, inherited cardiac conditions and cardiac sarcoid.

Dr Sandeep Vijaya Gopal I have been a cardiothoracic radiologist at Heartlands Hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham since 2022.

I am currently the joint college tutor for Radiology registrars at Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull hospital sites.

While most of my work is clinically focussed, I do provide support for thoracic research trials particularly in interstitial lung disease and have recently been involved with CXR discrepancy reviews at UHB as part of the multicentre Lung IMPACT AI CXR research trial.

I am also a supporting member of the local UHB PACS procurement team, contributing with feedback to the West Midlands Imaging Network’s specifications and plans for a regionalised Digital Imaging Platform.

Dr Shalini Datta am a Chest Radiologist in Greater Glasow and Clyde NHS and have a special interest in imaging of the Thymus.  With my team at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, I have been refining our MRI protocols to be able to consistently acquire images of high diagnostic quality. I also lead our regional Thymic MDT and hope to share my learning from some of the of the cases that have gone through our meeting in the last five years.

Dr Steven Watkins is a Consultant Clinical Oncologist who graduated from Barts and the London in 2001, completed post graduate training in London, predominately UCH and Mount Vernon. He has been a Consultant at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust since 2015. specialising in the treatment of patients with skin and lung malignancies, with a specific interest in advanced stereotactic and ablative radiotherapy techniques and the management of advanced non-melanomatous skin cancers.

John Reynolds  I have been been a consultant radiologist at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital with an interest in cardiothoracic imaging since 1993. From 2006 to 2009 I served as President of the British Society of Thoracic Imaging - a special interest group of the Royal College of Radiologists. Academic publications include articles on airway disease, diffuse lung disease, pulmonary vasculitis and pneumonia along with several modules in the thoracic section of the Royal College of Radiologists Integrated Training Initiative. I have served on the editorial boards of Clinical Radiology, The British Journal of Radiology and Imaging and served as the respiratory expert lead for i-Refer, the Royal College of Radiologists' clinical guideline publication. My lung cancer interest led to me being on the medical advisory group of the UK Lung Cancer Coalition. I have previously fulfilled the roles of Clinical Director of Radiology, Divisional Director of Emergency Care and Assistant Medical Director - Governance at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust. Currently working part-time in clinical radiology.

John Driesbach Consultant Cardiothoracic Radiologist at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Glasgow, appointed after a post-CCT fellowship in Cardiac Imaging in Toronto General Hospital at the University of Toronto. Committee member and Lead for Education for the British Society of Thoracic Imaging. Clinical involvement with multiple tertiary services in Scotland covering the full spectrum of acquired and adult congenital heart disease, as well as lung cancer and non-vascular thoracic intervention, with interests in imaging research and education.

Dr Laura Succony has been a Consultant Respiratory Physician at Royal Papworth Hospital and Cambridge University Hospitals since 2020.  She undertook an interventional pulmonology fellowship at University College Hospital and completed her PhD in Sam Jayne’s laboratory at UCL in in the biology of early lung cancer. She has an interest in early detection of lung cancer and interventional pulmonology including EBUS-TBNA and currently a Principal Investigator on several early lung cancer studies.

Paul Lyon, DPhil, FRCR Dr. Paul Lyon has worked a Consultant in Clinical Radiology within the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust with specialist interest in Interventional Oncology since 2022. Paul works within the Oxford Thermal Ablation service and performs CT-guided lung, liver and kidney ablations. Paul is the lead for the TARGET-UK thermal ablation registry, which is due to launch Nationally in 2025, and is aimed at generating high level multicenter clinical evidence for safety and efficacy of thermal ablation.

Paul is the Associate Clinical Director for Oxford’s clinical High Intensity Focused Ultrasound department, which shares strong links with the University of Oxford, and was designated a Focused Ultrasound Foundation Centre of Excellence in 2024. Prior to his Academic Clinical Radiology training in Oxford, Paul undertook an NIHR-funded DPhil at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford. He led a first-in-man study exploring the safety, feasibility and efficacy of ultrasound-triggered drug delivery using localised intra-tumoural hyperthermia in liver metastases (TARDOX Study, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02181075)¹. This highly-cited landmark study completed in 2017 and further similar trials have followed, highlighting the great clinical potential for ultrasound-triggered drug deliver

¹ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(18)30332-2/fulltext

Becca Duerden has been a specialist Thoracic radiologist for over 17 years, with interests including thoracic oncology and thoracic Interventional radiology, interstitial lung disease, asthma, emphysema and pulmonary hypertension.

Currently working at Stockport, she is a member of the BTOG Specialist Interest Group for Thymic Malignancies, as well as Greater Manchester Cancer co-lead for the Single Queue Diagnostics Project and Lead for the CT lung biopsy Single Queue Project.

She was radiology lead for services including asthma, emphysema and pulmonary hypertension at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester between 2014 and 2023, and previously worked at Bristol Royal Infirmary from 2009 to 2014, covering tertiary level thoracic imaging and intervention, and providing cardiac imaging including GUCH MDT radiology lead for quaternary services to the South West.