INTRODUCTION

The ICP2012 Success

On the 23^rd to 27^th of July, the 16^th International Conference on Plastination (ICP2012) (http://www.csas.org.cn/icp2012/) was successfully held in Beijing，China. The conference was jointly hosted by the International Society for Plastination (ISP), the Chinese Society for Anatomical Sciences (CSAS) and Beijing Capital Medical University (CCMU). About 110 delegates from 27 countries attended the conference.

Professor Gareth Jones from the University of Otago, New Zealand, Professor Darrell Evans from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK, Professor Andreas Weiglein from Graz Medical University, Austria, and Professor Beat Riederer from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland gave their plenary lectures and another 51 delegates gave either platform or poster presentations. The presentations covered the areas related to plastination and preservation of biological specimens, including their potential application to clinical, functional and digital anatomy. The participants took full advantage of this conference for formal and informal interaction with colleagues from all over the world, sharing knowledge of the most recent advances in technology, education and research of plastination and biological preservation.

The ICP 2012 continued the tradition of the ISP biennial conferences and ran a two day pre-conference hands-on workshop at the CCMU. The workshop was supervised by Professor Rafael Latorre from the University of Murcia, Spain, Professor Constantin Sora from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria and A/Professor Carlos Baptista from the University of Toledo, the United States. Fifty-three people participated in the workshop. The workshop provided hands-on training on the basic principles and techniques of plastination, particularly the epoxy sheet plastination technique, and was well received and praised by the participants.

During the conference, the ISP held its council meeting and general business meeting. It was decided that the 17^th International Conference on Plastination will be held in St Petersburg, Russia in 2014.