The Cafe started in 2017, although its origin is inspired from events which happened much earlier. There were few avenues for education during our residency, with the Radiology Education Foundation (REF), led by Dr Bhavin Jankharia and Dr Ravi Ramakantan, leading the way with its no frills high quality conferences. Besides these, Mumbai radiology trainees were lucky to also have more informal monthly sessions called The Bone Club. Both the Annual RRC Residents Review Course and the Bone Club used to happen at Tata Memorial Hospital, a stone’s throw away from KEM Hospital where Akshay trained. Fortuitously, Akshay joined Tata Memorial as faculty after completing his fellowship training abroad. The Bone Club had winded up by then, but Aditya Daftary and Malini Lawande, the forces behind it, worked close to Tata as well. Akshay met Aditya in 2017 and requested permission to restart the educational initiative. He gave his blessings and gyaan. Much more importantly, his then fellows Chinmay and Ankita were equally excited about this idea and the three teamed up together! The three of us decided to rechristen the new initiative Cafe Roentgen. The name was Chinmay’s brilliant idea. Akshay insisted on the Godfather font on the logo, which of course had to be an xray with the coffee mug and a wedding ring (Akshay’s hand, as he was the married one!). We restarted the monthly physical lecture format at Tata Memorial, and also launched our website. The lectures were well received, with people even traveling from Pune to attend them! Understanding the need for quality education beyond Mumbai, we started transitioning to a hybrid model to allow attendees outside Mumbai to attend online.

Dr Bhavin saw the immense potential in this, and before we knew it, our first online only Cafe Roentgen REF Webinar happened on 29th May 2019! It started as a once a week Wednesday Webinar and grew steadily. Covid then gave a jumpstart to everything. We held what was probably India’s first Covid based Radiology Webinar in March 2020, before the lockdown began. We quickly moved to four webinars a week, with as many as 900+ attendees from over 30 countries in the early days of the lockdown. As life normalized post the second wave, we now hold triweekly sessions – the ‘original’ Wednesday Webinar by an Indian faculty, a Saturday night live interactive session, and an International speaker taking the Sunday Webinar. Our sessions have ranged from the broader exam oriented topics to niche talks on skin ultrasound and post op failed back syndrome, from webinars by the LIRADS committee to webinars on applying for fellowships abroad and on how to manage personal finance. The platform gave us ample scope to explore and offer everything of potential benefit.

Apart from the webinars, the website also tries to fill in the gap in quality education in its own unique way. We have India’s most comprehensive list of all subspecialty training courses, and have detailed reviews of many of them on our site. We also have a dedicated ‘Beyond the Shores’ section which guides those interested in applying for training abroad, with blogs on applying to the US, Canada, UK, rest of Europe, Middle-East, Singapore and Australia. We also have a section for newly joined radiology residents, including our popular recommendations on which books to read for residency. Our section on the Art and Science of the Radiology Report guides the trainees create well-constructed reports. Our miscellaneous section has an interesting mix of opinion-based blogs, including some of our most popular and appreciated articles!

We started this journey as a group of young radiologists sitting on the shoulders of doyens, hoping to contribute in our own small way in preparing the next generation of radiologists. It has been an exhilarating and rewarding ride till now, helping us grow as individuals, physicians, and educators, and we look forward to continuing to innovate and contribute to radiology education and training in whatever way we can!

Akshay Baheti, MD

Associate Professor, Dept of Radiology, Tata Memorial Hospital;

Affiliate Instructor, Body Imaging Section, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle

Chief interests: Abdominal imaging, Pediatric imaging, Oncoimaging, Contrast-related issues, Radiology journalism

Ankita Ahuja, DNB

Consultant, Innovision Imaging, Mumbai

Chief interests: MSK imaging, Neuroimaging, Head and Neck Imaging

Chinmay Mehta, DNB

Consultant Interventional Musculoskeletal Radiologist, Pulse  Imaging, Mumbai

Chief interests: MSK imaging and intervention.