Esben Søvsø Szocska Hansen – currently a lab manager at the MR Research Centre, Aarhus University – actually expected to become what he calls the ‘classic B&O engineer’. He took a Bachelor of Engineering degree at Aarhus School of Engineering and graduated from the Faculty of Health at Aarhus university as a Master of Science in Engineering. Along the way, he became increasingly inspired by the interaction between the body and technology. This led him more in the direction of biomedical technology and hence, via a dissertation on ‘MR Scanning and the Heart’ and a PhD on the subject, to a specialism in cardiac metabolism and MR scanning.

Technically, he is still with the university in Aarhus, but physically he works at Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby, where the main tools of his trade are MR scanners, operating theatres and other laboratories, on which his work is completely dependent. Today, the MR Research Centre is one of the few places in the world where new studies of MR scanning and the visualization of the body’s metabolism are feasible. This relies on a technique known as hyperpolarized MR [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1733835100], whose inventor, Professor Jan Henrik Ardenkjær-Larsen, still collaborates closely with Esben and the MR Research Centre. Although hyperpolarized MR is a small field, there is a lot of collaboration and a great willingness to participate in joint research. The MR Research Centre therefore has close partnerships with Oxford, Cambridge and UCSF in San Francisco, with whom they constantly conduct studies and arrange student exchanges. Esben Søvsø Hansen spent 6 months at Oxford himself to learn more about hyperpolarized MR.

Learning new methods, with your hands or your head, and designing studies to the next level
He says that learning new methods, with your hands or your head, and designing studies to the next level, is the cornerstone of his thinking when he embarks on something new.

‘I’ll rummage around in the codes on the scanner, learn a new technique for carrying out operations on experimental animals, or train a new student in a technique, so that I can move on to my next project. Hyperpolarized MR therefore spoke directly to my engineer’s heart, because you can easily launch into mathematics, programming, medicine and diseases to make the studies come out right in the end’, he says.

Esben goes so far as to say that ‘it is an honour’ for him to have an understanding of most of the processes involved in a given research study.

‘Some things whet my interest more than others, of course, and there the heart as an organ occupies a special place for me, because from the start of my dissertation and later in my PhD, I put a lot of effort into carrying out good studies in that field. Among other things, that led me to one of my most recent studies, together with Professor Won Yong Kim [Veno-occlusive unloading of the heart reduces infarct size in experimental ischemiareperfusion].

There, we wanted to find out whether a limited blood flow to the heart during a blood clot could improve the heart’s subsequent survival. The study was a hodgepodge of everything from my PhD, so I was dealing with everything from anaesthetizing the pig to invasive heart pumping function measurements, the heart blood clot, then the hyperpolarized MR scan and finally the removal of the heart for final assessment. It makes for a very packed experiment day, of course, but then it helps when the cardiologist tells me not to tell the other cardiologists I’m doing it all myself’, says Esben with a laugh.

"I’ll rummage around in the codes on the scanner, learn a new technique for carrying out operations on experimental animals, or train a new student in a technique, so that I can move on to my next project. Hyperpolarized MR therefore spoke directly to my engineer’s heart, because you can easily launch into mathematics, programming, medicine and diseases to make the studies come out right in the end"

Enjoys being in a group with a strong team spirit
The individual aspect is not the most important thing to him, though.

‘I enjoy being in a group with a strong team spirit, where we collaborate on most projects. Professor Christoffor Laustsen, who leads the MR Research Centre, [https://mr.au.dk/] and I have a lot of ambitions as to where we want to go with our research on MR scanning and hyperpolarized MR’, he says.

Esben occupies a special position as lab manager at the university. He is not an associate professor – and hence not a lecturer – but he works together with his professor, an associate professor, an assistant professor and a group of PhD students, both on his own research and as an assistant to the others in their research. ‘We are among the few groups who are allowed to hold onto somebody like me. That is, to retain a big bundle of experience that doesn’t disappear off into industry or go off to be an associate professor in a new group. It works well when there is still room for you to grow in your research’, says Esben.

The number of articles produced by the group – and Esben – tells its own story, and the structure also showed its effectiveness during the Corona lockdown. They achieved what they had planned, and also enabled their PhD students to complete.

As mentioned, Esben is an engineer and his PhD is in medicine; the way he himself describes the work is that the doctors bring patient groups and issues, and he then looks at how he and his team can find the answers the doctors need, while also considering whether they can do something technically that will be new and that many patients and practitioners alike can benefit from.

Esben Søvsø Szocska Hansen is training for a mini triathlon and also runs, cycles and swims in his spare time.
He used to box, but these days he is more likely to be larking about with his three children, aged 2,4 and 7.
His wife is a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy not far from their home in Tulstrup.

Taking pictures of the metabolism in the body the moment it happens
‘One of our main functions as an MR research group is to take the MR scanning technique and show new results and functionalities that can be of benefit to medical research. Our main focus in recent years has been the hyperpolarized MR technique, which makes it possible to take pictures of the metabolism in the body the moment it happens – without doing anything other than introducing a contrast substance into the bloodstream. More specifically, we can hyperpolarize pyruvate and measure how it breaks down into other components in the cells and – while it is happening – take pictures of where there is most activity. We have done this in a large number of rat and pig experiments, but most recently we have also been the first to work on showing the applicability of the technique to the human pancreas [https://doi.org/10.1002/jmri.26888]. The next step after this study is to follow people with pancreatic cancer to see if our technique can measure whether their chemotherapy is affecting the tumour after as little as a week. It would be super interesting if we could contribute a new tool for such a serious disease as pancreatic cancer. As well as cancer, we also focus on cardiac metabolism, and there we have both pig and human studies that people can look forward to reading more about soon’, he says.