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.

Speakers at the ISMRM 2022 Annual Meeting Special Session:

View the session page here

Paul Bottomley
“1.5 Tesla in 1982”

Jürgen Henning
“My (I)SMRM Moments”

Graeme Bydder
“Plus ça Change”

Roberta Kravitz
“Building community”

Elizabeth Morris
“EDI needs all of us”

Margaret Hall-Craggs
“Some things change, some things don’t: Working with the AMPC”

Mark Haacke
“Reminiscences of my early days in MRI leading up to the formation of the ISMRM“

The Ad-Hoc Subcommittee:

Stefano Mandija, Chair
Chao Ma, Vice-Chair
Ruiliang Bai
Li Feng
Francesco Giganti
Andrada Ianus
Hong-Hsi Lee
Fei Li
Thomas Welton

Project Stakeholders & Advisory Groups:

ISMRM Executive Director Roberta Kravitz
ISMRM 2022 EDI Committee Chair Elizabeth A. Morris
ISMRM 2022 Vice-President Scott Reeder
ISMRM 2022 Vice-President Elect Derek Jones
ISMRM AMPC 2022 Chair Steven Sourbron
ISMRM Chair of the Web Editorial Board Wally Block
ISMRM Study Groups
ISMRM Board of Trustees
ISMRM Past Presidents
ISMRM Chapters’ Governing Committees
ISMRM Gold Medalists and Silver Medalists
ISMRM AMPC Table Chairs
ISMRM Historical Archives Committee
MRM Editor in Chief Peter Jezzard
JMRI Editor in Chief Mark Schweitzer