ISMRM Abstracts, 2025

The meeting next year will be in Hawaii, a popular place, and the ISMRM organizers are sifting through more than 8000 abstracts submitted for presentation there. I have been critical to the abstract's HTML format, and a recently introduced sectioned Synopsis (in fact the presence of Synopsis at all). However, from an abstract reviewer's point of view, I must say these changes are helpful, to quickly get to know the work, and inspect details of selected figures. The organizers also did a good job in summarizing the review progress graphically in real time. This allows a reviewer to stay "normalized", by observing how the score distribution changes from start to finish as more than 50 assigned abstracts are scored. Certainly a lot of change has happened in ISMRM abstract processing since the early 2010s. I still hold up two things as suggestions to the Society: (1) The scores should be made available to the authors, and (2) All rejected abstracts should be given a chance to be archived, if not presented, on-line. That is democratization, not giving out low-performance MRI to those who deserve better.

MRI as a patient

I guess a web log dedicated to Magnetic Resonance Life is not complete without MR images of the author as a patient. For that purpose, I had an opportunity, albeit painful, to collect exactly such data in early November. The 1.5 T GE Signa Artist images shown above display "unremarkable" brain anatomical images with multiple contrasts following a standard protocol in Albany Medical Center. The total exam lasted for 21 minutes, and I must say the image qualities are pretty good for 1.5 T. The Center used apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) to look for brain vessel blockage (infarct), and susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) for brain blood leakage (hemorrhage).