RSNA 2026¶

112th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America — McCormick Place, Chicago, IL · Nov 29 – Dec 3, 2026. ~50,000 attendees, the largest medical-imaging meeting in the world. 2026 theme: "At the Center of Care" (president-elect cycle; full leadership confirmed closer to the meeting).

Status: Scaffold — meeting is ~7 months out as of today. Abstract submission closed earlier in the spring; acceptance notifications are rolling out now (RSNA in Brief April 2026). Registration opens late July. This vault stands up the per-tool template and the program-notes prep page now so the live-coverage scaffold is ready when the AI Showcase exhibitor list and program grid go public (typically late summer / early fall).

Why this is in the vault¶

RSNA is the medical-imaging counterpart to AACR 2026. The convergence point is imaging foundation models: the same self-supervised whole-slide / multimodal architectures that AACR 2026 tracks for histopathology (CHIEF, Prov-GigaPath, UNI/UNI2) extend at RSNA to radiology — CT, MR, mammography, and emerging cross-modality FMs that read pathology + radiology + radiology-text jointly. RSNA is also where clinical-deployment data for those models lands (prospective screening trials, real-world readouts, FDA-cleared product announcements), which AACR almost never carries.

The AACR vault already has standalone dossiers for CHIEF, Prov-GigaPath, and UNI. The RSNA vault extends that index with the radiology-native FMs and methods (RadFM, Med-PaLM-M, Merlin, RadDino, MAIRA, CheXagent, MedSAM, plus whatever debuts in the 2026 cycle) and the clinical-trial readouts that depend on them.

Format note: RSNA is half tools / half trials — closer in shape to the JPM / ASCO vaults than to AACR. Per-tool pages anchor the AI track; per-trial pages anchor the screening-AI and imaging-driven oncology readouts (lung-cancer screening AI, mammography AI-CAD, prostate MRI PI-RADS AI). No standalone trials/ subdirectory yet — the imaging-trial coverage is folded into the per-tool pages where a model has named trial data, with a light cross-link table in program-notes.md. If the post-meeting corpus warrants it, a separate trials/ directory gets carved out.

What we have / will have to work with¶

Source	Coverage	Notes
RSNA Daily Bulletin	per-day session recaps written by RSNA editorial	dailybulletin.rsna.org — first-pass primary source during the meeting
RSNA Meeting Program	session grid, refresher courses, scientific sessions, AI track	meeting.rsna.org — searchable program goes live late summer
Radiology / Radiology: AI journals	embargoed companion publications timed to the meeting	pubs.rsna.org — many headline trial readouts publish simultaneously with the meeting talk
AI Showcase exhibitor list	100+ AI vendors in South Hall A	rsna.org/ai-showcase — booth-level demo programming
RSNAI Monthly press releases	RSNA's own AI-track preview series	rsna.org/media/press — monthly cadence Sep–Dec
Aunt Minnie / RadAI / AuntMinnie Europe	trade-press editorial, sponsor stand-ups	auntminnie.com, radai.com
STAT / HealthTechHotspot	post-meeting analyst framing, infrastructure narrative	sub-required for some
Vendor press releases	RSNA 2026 product announcements, FDA-cleared offerings	wire-service syndication
Plenary livestreams + replay	named lectures, presidential address	RSNA Virtual Meeting (separate registration; on-demand for ~12 months)

The Radiology / Radiology: AI companion-publication pattern is the analogue to ASCO's Meeting Library: every load-bearing claim from a podium talk should be backed by a journal DOI when one exists, not just the Daily Bulletin recap.

Program shape¶

RSNA 2026 runs Sunday Nov 29 through Thursday Dec 3, five days, McCormick Place. The structure:

Sunday Nov 29 — opening day. President's Address + Annual Oration (named lecture). First scientific sessions. Technical Exhibits open 10:00–17:00 CT.
Monday Nov 30 – Wednesday Dec 2 — full program days. Scientific sessions, refresher courses, hot-topic / controversy sessions, plenaries, AI Theater programming.
Thursday Dec 3 — closing day, lighter program. Some refresher courses, AI Showcase closed.
AI Showcase (South Hall A, Booth ~4700-block) — 100+ AI vendors, demo programming, AI Theater (20-minute vendor talks Sun–Wed), runs Nov 29 – Dec 2.
"Radiology Reimagined: AI, innovation and interoperability in practice" demonstration — live every half hour Mon–Wed in the AI Showcase. Showcases standards-based AI integration into the diagnostic workflow (the IAIP successor demo).
Deep-learning lecture series — refresher-course track on AI/ML fundamentals, governance, validation. Recurring multi-day series.
2026 RSNA AI Challenge — Knee MRI (announced; first MSK challenge in the series). Winners announced at the meeting.
~1,500+ scientific paper sessions, ~1,800+ scientific posters, ~700 refresher courses (typical scale; 2026-specific counts available after the program goes live).
Tracks dominating the AI corpus: Breast (AI-CAD, density / risk models), Chest (lung-nodule detection, screening AI), Neuro (stroke triage, tumor segmentation), MSK (this year's challenge focus), Cardiac (CCTA AI), Abdominal (opportunistic-screening AI, body composition), Informatics (foundation models, multimodal LLMs, governance / regulation / reimbursement).

Organization¶

conferences/rsna-2026/
├── index.md             # this page
├── program-notes.md     # pre-meeting prep: dates, venue, AI track structure, expected FM updates,
│                        # cross-links to AACR pathology-FM dossiers, anticipated imaging-trial readouts
└── tools/               # PRIMARY artifact — per-tool template for imaging FMs + AI methods
    └── index.md         # template + master tool index table, cross-linked to AACR dossiers

The tools/ directory is the load-bearing artifact, mirroring the EuroBioC 2025 per-tool template but adapted for medical-imaging FMs and methods (where "Bioconductor package page" becomes "model weights + checkpoint + license"). Imaging-driven clinical trials are folded in as a "Named trials using this model" sub-section on each tool page rather than getting their own directory — most trials at RSNA are about evaluating a model, so the model is the natural index.

Expected ~15–25 tool entries by post-meeting close, depending on how many radiology-native FMs surface new checkpoints / clinical-deployment data at the 2026 cycle. The AACR pathology-FM dossiers are not duplicated here — they're cross-linked, with an RSNA-specific addendum on each tool page noting any radiology-extension work or cross-modality variants surfaced at RSNA.

What's different from AACR 2026¶

Imaging-FM is the convergence point, not the periphery. At AACR, pathology FMs are one topic among many; at RSNA, foundation models for radiology are the dominant axis of the AI track. The tool template is identical to AACR's bioinfo-tools index in structure; the population differs.
Clinical-deployment data is first-class. Where AACR mostly carries the model paper and a few benchmark posters, RSNA carries the prospective screening trial, the real-world readout, the FDA-clearance press release, and the post-deployment audit (drift, fairness, generalization).
Vendor presence dominates the exhibit floor. Unlike AACR (academic-led), RSNA's AI Showcase is vendor-led — 100+ companies, named booths, AI Theater demo programming. The vault treats vendor announcements as second-tier sources (linked in tool pages but always paired with a peer-reviewed reference or named talk).
Cross-modality FMs are the 2026 watch. The 2024–2025 cycle was about pathology FMs (CHIEF, GigaPath, UNI). 2026 will likely surface more radiology-pathology bridges (Merlin-style; multimodal report-generation models). These are tracked here, not at AACR.

Cross-vault links¶

AACR 2026 — the pathology-FM and biology side. Direct dossier links from the RSNA tool pages back to:
CHIEF — pathology FM, Mahmood Lab, Nature 2024
Prov-GigaPath — pathology FM, Microsoft / Providence
UNI — pathology FM, Mahmood Lab, Nature Medicine 2024
JPM 2026 — financing / commercial layer. Many RSNA 2026 vendors had JPM presentations in January (imaging-AI startups, large vendors like GE / Siemens / Philips).
ASCO 2026 — clinical-trial counterpart for imaging-driven oncology readouts (lung-screening AI, breast-density / risk models tied to chemoprevention).
Conferences timeline — RSNA's position in the year's cycle (AACR Apr → ASCO May/Jun → ESMO Oct → ASH Dec → RSNA late Nov / early Dec → JPM Jan).

Next step¶

Now (May 2026, T-7 months): stand up the per-tool template and program-notes prep file (this commit). Identify the candidate FM list — pathology FMs (cross-link to AACR), radiology-native FMs (RadFM, Med-PaLM-M, Merlin, RadDino, MAIRA, CheXagent), and segmentation FMs (MedSAM, SegVol). Track the AACR 2026 talks where radiology-pathology cross-modality work surfaced.
Summer 2026 (T-3 to T-5 months): registration opens late July; full program goes live late summer. At that point, populate the tool index with confirmed talks / sessions and pull the AI Showcase exhibitor list once published.
Fall 2026 (T-1 to T-2 months): RSNAI Monthly Sep / Oct / Nov press releases preview the AI track. Pull the highlighted FMs / trials and pre-build stub pages.
Live meeting (Nov 29 – Dec 3): Daily Bulletin recaps + Radiology / Radiology: AI companion-publication dropouts feed the tool pages and the embedded trial cross-links.
Post-meeting (Dec 2026 – Jan 2027): finalize tool corpus. Cross-check against AACR 2026 pathology-FM mentions for the model-overlap audit.