Matters of Concern

Erik Odeblad †
31 January 1922 – 17 October 2019

t is with great sadness that we share the news of the pass­ing away of Professor Erik Odeblad of Umeå in Sweden.

The global magnetic resonance community has lost one of its most sincere, devoted and finest scientists in me­di­cal mag­ne­tic re­so­nance ba­sic re­search and app­lica­tion.

Professor Odeblad was the pioneer scientist who showed that the NMR signal of tissues was affected by its chemical and biological surroundings, influencing the relaxation times of tissue. He submitted his results to Acta Radiologica in December 1954; the paper was published in 1955 (Odeblad E, Lindström G: Some preliminary observations on the pro­ton mag­ne­tic re­so­nance in bio­logi­cal samples. Acta Radiol 1955; 43: 469-476).

In the following years he built his own NMR spec­tro­me­ters and con­tinued his work on bio­log­ical samples. In 1966 he became Head of the Department of Me­di­cal Physics at the Uni­ver­sity of Umeå. He published some sixty scientific papers on magnetic resonance in human tissue. He received the European Magnetic Resonance Award in 2012 (picture).

Additional details: Europe celebrates the forgotten pioneer of MRI – Dr. Erik Odeblad.

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Harald Østensen †

or many years Har­ald Østen­sen ex­empli­fied the com­bi­na­tion of ex­tra­or­di­nary achieve­ment with de­cen­cy and bene­vo­lence by or­ga­niz­ing teach­ing cour­ses and sup­port­ing ap­pro­pri­ate means of me­di­cal imag­ing, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in coun­tries with li­mi­ted re­sour­ces.

Harald Østensen received his medical education and training in Germany and Norway. He worked as a general practitioner and later as a radiologist in hospitals all over Norway. Until the early 1990s, her was the Managing Director of the NICER courses – continuing education in radiology for world regions lacking the range of medical education available in many rich countries. His group – supported by a medical company – built up a global program, enlisting well-known teachers in radiology from all over the world. The goal was untainted education of the highest possible quality. Østensen then joined the World Health Organization at their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in charge of global medical imaging. Again, he put his emphasis on basic and applied teaching and edited numerous books and brochures which were distributed free of charge. One of his main goals in Geneva was the introduction of digital radiography in countries with few resources. He died in 2011.