Message from Daniel K. Sodickson, M.D., Ph.D.,
Program Chair


“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

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