Attendees at the 2019 RSNA conference had several opportunities to learn more about artificial intelligence at the machine learning area. (Image from RSNA)

Nearly 53,000 people attended the 2019 Radiological Society of North America annual meeting in Chicago last week. And they heard the same acronym over and over again: AI.

Exhibitors at the conference touted their artificial-intelligence-enhanced technology at every turn, claiming to make images clearer, sharper, easier to use and powerful enough to help clinicians make better decisions about the images they see.

RSNA acknowledges that AI is central to the future of radiology, but says that radiologists should view it as a tool rather than a threat to their profession.

“The value of AI in radiology goes well beyond detecting abnormalities in images,” said Dr. Charles Kahn, Jr, chair of the RSNA radiology informatics committee. “It’s going to help in everything from selecting imaging procedures and protocols to making a diagnosis to communicating that diagnosis to our referring colleagues and patients.”

AI will significantly improve the radiology workflow and efficiency in day-to-day tasks, added Dr. Luciano Prevedello, chair of the radiology informatics committee’s AI subcommittee.

AI will likely continue to be a hot topic among radiologists, for multiple reasons. Artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that it gets, and getting high-quality, annotated, imaging data has been a challenge, according to Prevedello. It’s also important to understand how to deploy AI-aided systems in a clinical setting, he said.

More than 120 companies offered RSNA attendees the opportunity to try AI software and product demonstrations. Here are seven radiology developments — not all AI-based — that came out of the conference.

Next>>