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“There is in this Earth no maneuver more unnerving than the
Spin. Just when one thinks to have advanced into the twilight, Dawn
comes round again.” ~ Samuel Bowditch
Our field of
Magnetic Resonance is irrepressible. What other conclusion can be
drawn from the historical record, or from our own experience? For
the better part of a century, the basic principles governing spin
dynamics have marched from discipline to discipline, from physics to
chemistry to biomedicine and onward, gathering applications and
spawning technologies along the way. By all rights, the pace of
discovery should have slowed, this far into the maturity of so
well-understood a phenomenon as magnetic resonance. But the spin
continues to yield up new secrets, each time we determine how to
ask.
Our Societies too – the ISMRM and the ESMRMB – are seemingly
inexhaustible, and our Annual Meetings reflect this energy. Look
around the meeting rooms and poster halls each year, and you will
find ample evidence of creativity and perseverance, hard-won rigor
commingled with dramatic speculation. You will find basic
scientists and clinicians, and all manner of species in between,
with interests in everything from quantum fluctuations of the vacuum
to practical protocols for the routine diagnosis of torn ligaments.
The energies of the ISMRM
and the ESMRMB will converge in 2010 for our Joint Annual Meeting.
Members of the Annual Meeting
Program Committee in any year require a special brand of
vigor, and this year, their prodigious efforts are already apparent
in the rich educational program planned for 2010. The
Central Office
of the ISMRM, under the leadership of
Executive Director Roberta Kravitz, is, as always, hard at work in
making the 2010 meeting a resounding success, in close collaboration
with the leadership of the ESMRMB. We are also grateful for the
efforts and the collaboration of our
Local Organizing Committee.
In 2010, we will come together in Stockholm, home of the Nobel Prize
which has been bestowed upon a remarkable number of our colleagues.
You may expect various recognitions of our Nobel tradition at the
meeting. You should also expect to be charmed by your
surroundings. Stockholm is a beautiful city, both richly historic
and fully modern. It is an urban archipelago in the midst of the
larger Swedish archipelago, and if you walk its streets you will
soon find yourself crossing an unexpected island, or encountering a
surprising maritime vista in the midst of grand architectural
landmarks. The Old City of Gamla Stan is definitely worth a visit.
And if you have a taste for spectacular engineering failures
celebrated with humor and archeological precision, visit the Vasa
Museum.
Incorporated into the logo for our 2010 Stockholm meeting you will
find our theme of “Clinical Needs and Technological Solutions.”
We are indeed a community devoted to the development of new MR
techniques and technologies specifically in the service of improving
human health, and the ongoing dialogue between unsolved clinical
problems and new diagnostic or therapeutic tools in many ways
defines our mission. Each of the plenary sessions in 2010 is
explicitly linked to our theme. In four of the five sessions, an
initial lecture on biological substrates and current clinical
understandings will be followed by lectures on state-of-the-art MR
tools – in the areas of Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Osteoarthritis,
Atherosclerosis, and Genotyping. The fifth plenary session is
entitled “The eye of the beholder: an image reconstruction
challenge,” and it will break new ground for our plenary
sessions. Following a lecture on vision science, addressing how we
see and how we interpret images, the results of a scientific
competition will be presented. Carefully selected datasets will be
made available well before the meeting, and scientists across our
field will be encouraged to submit image reconstructions using their
favorite algorithms. A panel of radiologists will judge the
submissions, and will then discuss the reasons for their choices
with a panel of image reconstruction experts. We expect this
plenary session to be an eye-opening experience for basic scientists
and clinicians alike!
We are honored to have two extraordinary speakers for our Lauterbur
and Mansfield lectures this year, and we are pleased as well that,
together, they perfectly embody our meeting theme.
Dr. William Bradley,
renowned neuroradiologist, researcher, and thought leader, will be
delivering the Lauterbur Lecture with the title "MRI Over the
Next Decade: Quo Vadis?" The Mansfield Lecture of
Professor Ray Freeman,
spin gymnast extraordinaire and mentor to the mentors in our field,
will take us on a journey "From Rodin to Radon: Some Unusual
Applications of Projection-Reconstruction."
Caroline Reinhold, M.D., as Vice-Chair of the AMPC, has been
shepherd, scourge, visionary, and fearless leader of a band of
dedicated volunteers as the 2010 Educational Program has taken
shape. In recognition of the large number of hot topics which blur
disciplinary boundaries, Caroline has created a new educational
category this year for “Cross-Cutting and Emerging Areas,”
and you can look forward to numerous diverse offerings in addition
to a strong core of case-based clinical courses and introductions to
established research areas. Following a successful inaugural
experience in Honolulu, we will be offering a focused
Clinical
Intensive Education Program for clinicians interested in learning best
clinical practices from world leaders in the areas of neuroimaging,
musculoskeletal imaging, and body imaging. Continuing Medical
Education credits will be offered for this course and other
educational sessions.
Other meeting innovations in 2010 include enhanced connections
between educational and scientific sessions, creation of new
small-group experiences within the larger meeting, new convenient
(and environmentally sound) electronic formats for our program book,
and, of course, unforgettable Stockholm-themed entertainment.
Please feel free to visit our program
to follow the evolution of various initiatives planned for the
meeting.
On behalf of the program
committee, I warmly invite you to join us in Stockholm in May of
2010. Bring family, meet colleagues, share ideas, and learn about
state-of-the-art clinical practices and leading-edge research. And
remember, spins will be spins: you will be surprised!
Daniel K. Sodickson, M.D., Ph.D.
Chair, Annual Meeting Program Committee |
