Walking with the ISMRM in the
Footprints of our MR History
Message from Fernando Calamante (2021-2022 ISMRM President):
The Annual Meetings of the ISMRM (and its predecessor Societies, the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, SMRM, and the Society of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, SMRI) go all the way back to 1982, which was the year the 1st SMRM Annual Meeting took place in Boston, USA (August 16–18, 1982); 1983 was the year of the 1st SMRI Annual Meeting (Colorado Springs, USA). The Proceedings of all these historical meetings are now available online on the ISMRM website. These Proceedings provide an amazing footprint in the arc of our history as a Society, and the importance of our Annual Meetings as the avenue of choice for presenting new MR methods, tools, and applications of aspects of our field that have greatly impacted and transformed how MR is used today, and which have become ‘classic’ contributions. This is something the ISMRM should be very proud of, testimony to the role we have played helping MR leaders shape our field. It is indeed at our Annual Meetings where MR advances are most often first shown and/or conceived.
As it is often said, you must look at the past if you want to understand the future; by exploring the influential aspects of our past, it can help us envision what the future may look like and inspire us to dream high about it.
The “Footprints” project has involved broad consultation and led to a shortlist of 100 ‘classic’ abstracts to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Annual Meetings. If one thinks that we have well over 100,000 abstracts having been presented at our Annual Meetings over the years, the task of selecting a shortlist of ‘classics’ is indeed daunting. This is by no means “the list” of classics, but just the start of this project – a first trailer of our history.
After working on this project, I feel a bit like archaeologists from old times who had just discovered a new site, and the more they searched, the more amazing and influential material they found! This is just the start of our journey to unearth the footprints of ISMRM in the MR path, and there will be a follow up project(s) to address some of the gaps and diversity aspects we identified on the list.
We hope you will enjoy reading this collection.
Project Resources: