MRM Letter from the Editor: June 2025

Dear Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Subscribers,

In this month’s issue we have three papers from the ISMRM Diffusion Study Group that gather together information and good practice guidance on pre-clinical diffusion imaging. The first paper focuses on in-vivo small animal imaging, with the second focusing on the acquisition aspects of ex-vivo imaging, and the third and final paper focusing on data processing of ex-vivo images and their comparison with microscopy and tractography data. I encourage you to take a look at these papers if you have an interest in diffusion MRI.

Also, I want to formally announce that the journal is about to start using Wiley’s Research Exchange (ReX) Submission tool for authors who submit papers to the journal. Once this goes live, submitting authors will be redirected to the new Wiley ReX Submission tool and will need to set up a Wiley ScienceConnect account if they don’t already have one. We have tried to test this tool, and it seems to mostly work. However, due to limitations in the custom questions we can ask, there are some differences with the new system. Specifically:

• Magn Reson Med is no longer able to offer double-blind reviewing as an option, and will revert to single-blind reviewing only. In fact, the experiment with double-blind reviewing over the past few years has shown that it has been taken up by only a very small number of submitting authors (<10%), and has also been the route used by almost all the out-of-scope papers that have been submitted to the journal. This has resulted in a very high rejection rate for these papers (>80%). Apologies again that we can no longer offer this option.
• Authors who wish to have a Code Review (provided predominantly by members of the Reproducible Research Study Group) of code linked in their Data Availability Statement will now need to indicate this in the cover letter that accompanies their paper. This initiative has been well received by authors and has resulted in robust code being provided to readers, but the ability to ask this specific question during submission of the paper is now not available. However, please continue to request them via your cover letter!
• We will no longer ask if papers are being submitted as part of the ISMRM Young Investigator Award. Please visit the ISMRM web site to register papers that you wish to have considered for a YIA award. Submissions to this year’s competition run until 12 September 2025.

Finally, if you missed this year’s MRM Highlights Magazine (the 10^th issue to have been produced!) at the ISMRM Annual Meeting (edited once again by Maria Eugenia Caligiuri) then you can look at it online here.

Best wishes,
Peter Jezzard, PhD

HEADLINES

• The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine announced the winners of the competition for the 2025 Young Investigator Awards held in Honolulu, Hawai’I, USA. Congratulations to I. Rabi Award winner Zijing Dong, Ph.D., Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital Charlestown, MA, USA for the article, Romer-EPTI: Rotating-view motion-robust super-resolution EPTI for SNR-efficient distortion-free in-vivo mesoscale diffusion MRI and microstructure imaging.
  Congratulations also to the Prince-Meaney Translational Science Award winner Yueqi Qiu, B.S., Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China for the article, Spatiotemporal encoding MRI in a portable low-field system.
  More information on the awards and runners-up can be found here.
• The Top 5 most cited papers from 2022 (contributing to the latest Impact Factor) appear below:
  • 5: Velocity-selective arterial spin labeling perfusion MRI: A review of the state of the art and recommendations for clinical implementation
  • 4: Cerebral oxygen extraction fraction MRI: Techniques and applications
  • 3: Magnetic field strength dependent SNR gain at the center of a spherical phantom and up to 11.7T
  • 2: Recent Technical Developments in ASL: A Review of the State of the Art
  • 1: Review and consensus recommendations on clinical APT-weighted imaging approaches at 3T: Application to brain tumors
• Don’t forget to keep checking Study Group Virtual Special Issues that can be found at the journal homepage. Most ISMRM Study Groups have created Virtual Special Issues, with the aim of summarising the latest research in these topic areas. The idea is to update these at least annually to ensure that they remain “living documents” and hopefully will be a valuable resource to Study Group members. We have recently added or updated ones from the Pulmonary MR Study Group; the Quantitative MR Study Group; the Placental and Fetal MRI Study Group; the MR in Radiation Therapy Study Group; and the Motion Detection and Correction Study Group!
• In partnership with the Reproducible Research Study Group (RRSG) we are now offering authors the option of a Code Review of any code they provide in a Data Availability Statement. If authors request it in their cover letter, the RRSG will download the code and check that it installs and can be run. For details see here and an editorial on the experiences of the first year of its use here.

JUNE ISSUE

Attached you will find, in PDF format, the Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Table of Contents (TOC) for the Volume 93, Number 6, June 2025 issue. Additionally, clicking on a title in the attached PDF will take you directly to its abstract. To view the entire article, please use either your log-in information for the Wiley website or your institutional access. Note that many papers in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine are published as Open Access articles and can be freely downloaded by anyone.

June’s Cover Art: This month’s cover art is from:

3D joint T1/T1ρ/T2 mapping and water-fat imaging for contrast-agent free myocardial tissue characterization at 1.5T, by Michael G. Crabb, Karl P. Kunze, Simon J. Littlewood, Donovan Tripp, Anastasia Fotaki, Claudia Prieto, René M. Botnar

June’s Editor’s Picks: Each month, we highlight articles from the current issue that might be of particular interest to our readers. The articles will be available online to anyone for a period of two years, regardless of their subscription status. This month’s selections are:

• Considerations and recommendations from the ISMRM diffusion study group for preclinical diffusion MRI: Part 1: In vivo small-animal imaging, by Ileana O. Jelescu, Francesco Grussu, Andrada Ianus, Brian Hansen, Rachel L. C. Barrett, Manisha Aggarwal, Stijn Michielse, Fatima Nasrallah, Warda Syeda, Nian Wang, Jelle Veraart, Alard Roebroeck, Andrew F. Bagdasarian, Cornelius Eichner, Farshid Sepehrband, Jan Zimmermann, Lucas Soustelle, Christien Bowman, Benjamin C. Tendler, Andreea Hertanu, Ben Jeurissen, Marleen Verhoye, Lucio Frydman, Yohan van de Looij, David Hike, Jeff F. Dunn, Karla Miller, Bennett A. Landman, Noam Shemesh, Adam Anderson, Emilie McKinnon, Shawna Farquharson, Flavio Dell’Acqua, Carlo Pierpaoli, Ivana Drobnjak, Alexander Leemans, Kevin D. Harkins, Maxime Descoteaux, Duan Xu, Hao Huang, Mathieu D. Santin, Samuel C. Grant, Andre Obenaus, Gene S. Kim, Dan Wu, Denis Le Bihan, Stephen J. Blackband, Luisa Ciobanu, Els Fieremans, Ruiliang Bai, Trygve B. Leergaard, Jiangyang Zhang, Tim B. Dyrby,  Allan Johnson, Julien Cohen-Adad, Matthew D. Budde, Kurt G. Schilling
• A 128-channel receive array with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio performance for 10.5T brain imaging, by Russell L. Lagore, Alireza Sadeghi-Tarakameh, Andrea Grant, Matt Waks, Edward Auerbach, Steve Jungst, Lance DelaBarre, Steen Moeller, Yigitcan Eryaman, Riccardo Lattanzi, Ilias Giannakopoulos, Luca Vizioli, Essa Yacoub, Simon Schmidt, Gregory J. Metzger, Xiaoping Wu, Gregor Adriany, Kamil Uğurbil
• Basis function compression for field probe monitoring, by Paul I. Dubovan, Gabriel Varela-Mattatall, Eric S. Michael, Franciszek Hennel, Ravi S. Menon, Klaas P. Pruessmann, Adam B. Kerr, Corey A. Baron
• Comparison of water exchange measurements between filter-exchange imaging and diffusion time-dependent kurtosis imaging in the human brain, by Zhaoqing Li, Chunjing Liang, Qingping He, Thorsten Feiweier, Yi-Cheng Hsu, Jianhua Li, Ruiliang Bai

FEATURES

*The MRM Highlights Magazine, Volume 10, is available online!

Recent Q&A articles and special features:

Selection: Open Science Initiative for Perfusion Imaging (OSIPI)

• • • Q&A with the OSIPI Leadership: Laura Bell, Ben Dickie, Petra Houdt, Henk Mutsaerts, and Yuriko Suzuki

Selection: Wirelessly interfacing sensor-equipped implants and MR scanners for improved safety and imaging

• • • Q&A with Berk Silemek and Lukas Winter
    • Reproducible Research Insights with Berk Silemek and Lukas Winter

Selection: Fast measurement of the gradient system transfer function at 7 T

• • • Q&A with Hannah Scholten and Herbert Köstler
    • Reproducible Research Insights with Hannah Scholten

Special Features:

• • • Special MRM Highlights feature: RRSG roundtable discussion on open science, with Cassandra Gould Van Praag
    • Special MRM Highlights feature: RRSG podcast on the ISMRM Challenge and reproducibility, with Laura Bortolotti and Sophie Schauman
    • 2022-23 ISMRM Challenge – Repeat It With Me: Reproducibility Team Challenge

We’re accepting YIA submissions for the 2026 ISMRM Annual Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa

Our ScholarOne site is open for manuscript submissions in conjunction with the 2026 I.I. Rabi Award for Basic Science and the Prince-Meaney Award in Translational Science to be awarded at the ISMRM 34^th Annual Meeting & Exhibition in in Cape Town, South Africa, 09-14 May 2026. The submission deadline will be 12 September 2025. For more information about the YIA competition, please visit here.

Full Issue PDFs

Full Issue PDFs are now available for download.  Please follow the link available at the journal home page. You will be prompted for your ISMRM login information.

LINKS OF INTEREST

June Articles
Early View
ISMRM Journal Page
Journal Home Page
Highlights Page
Highlights Print Supplements, including:

• 2016, featuring Erwin Hahn’s interview
• 2017, featuring John Tanner’s interview
• 2018, featuring Al Macovski’s interview
• 2019, featuring Joanne Ingwall’s interview
• 2020, Virtual Issue, Volume 5
• 2021, Virtual Issue, Volume 6
• 2022, Virtual Issue, Volume 7
• 2023, Virtual Issue, Volume 8
• 2024, Virtual Issue, Volume 9
• 2025, Virtual Issue, Volume 10

Cover Gallery
Virtual Special Issues
YouTube Channel
Previous Editor’s Picks
Full Issue PDFs (ISMRM login required)