IOMP Medal (2016) Award to John Mallard for his MRI work

MRI and John Mallard:

The Complete 8 Chapters

Despite how significant the R&D that John Mallard’s 1980 Aberdeen University physics and engineering group achieved in building the first clinical total-body MRI machine, international professional recognition was not received with any substance at that time.

It took another 36 years after that first MRI diagnosed cancer patient at Aberdeen Hospital when Mallard received the 2016 IOMP Medal.

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Suggestion:

If you have not read any of the 8 chapters of this MRI and Mallard Story, then it’s recommended, you start at:

John Mallard: The MRI Story

and sequentially read the stories that surrounded the evolution of MRI and Mallard’s on-going career. The stories are factual. They were created from rare source literature on this topic and also from my personal contact (neverless brief) with Professor John Mallard.

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1. Making the human body transparent
2. The pathway to clinical imaging
3. Creating an NMR image from biological samples
4. My brush with fame
5. 2003 Nobel Prize
6. The first clinical whole-body MRI scanner
7. Rekindling my ‘brush with fame’
8. IOMP Medal (2016) awarded to John Mallard for his MRI work

Summarising these chapters, the stories cover how:

1. MRI evolved from research using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques;
2. Later biological samples were studied;
3. Then NMR of parts of animals and human anatomy became possible; and finally
4. NMR (renamed MRI) research and development made it possible to image a patient’s full body length for clinical diagnostic imaging purposes.

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The IOMP medal awarded to John Mallard (2016)

The International Organisation for Medical Physics (IOMP) announced the John Mallard Award in November, 2016:

IOMP described John Mallard’s MRI work as:

His major contribution to medical imaging was in Magnetic Resonance Imaging. His group was responsible for some of the discoveries which led to this technique becoming a clinically viable technique, including the concept of spin warp imaging which allowed truly 3D MR images of the whole body to be produced for the first time. The production of the first clinically valuable magnetic resonance images from patients in 1980 was a major scientific event.

Mallard was a world leader in a number of other significant medical technology advances and was a major participator in establishing the International professional bodies for Physics and Engineering in Medicine.

Other Mallard achievements

Mallard was the Founder President of the International Union of Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (IUPESM); a founder Secretary-General of the International Organisation for Medical Physics (IOMP) and, later on, its President. Mallard received the IUPESM Award of Merit in 1988 and was included in the IOMP 50-year celebrations for the world’s highest achievers.

What does the IOMP Award honour?

The Award honours a medical physicist who has developed an innovation of high scientific quality and who has successfully applied this innovation in clinical practice (e.g. equipment, software, methodology), or who has led a team developing this innovation.

What’s the significance of this Award?

To indicate the significance of this IOMP medal, there’s previously only been two other prestigious IOMP Medals offered and these were to the internationally recognised, famous medical physicists:

1. Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award

and

2. Harold Johns

Professor John Mallard may not have received the Nobel Prize, but he has certainly earned the international respect of his medical physics colleagues.

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Aberdeen University Today

What Mallard’s old department is today:

https://www.abdn.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-taught/degree-programmes/180/medical-physics/

It’s very impressive.

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Author’s Final Comments

It was not just Mallard’s professional brilliance that the IOMP honoured. It was a culmination of many other qualities he demonstrated, such as:

• bridging the gap between university laboratory research to the clinic R&D and eventually the patient;
• his leadership qualities;
• his ability to harness the energy and intelligence of others working with him;
• his ability to sell his ideas; and above all,
• his determination to overcome all obstacles to succeed in what he believed would be for the patients’ benefit. 

I’m just so glad that I had my ‘brush with fame’!

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