OAK BROOK, Ill. (August 1, 2018) — The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) is leading the field in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) research and education with expanded opportunities planned over the coming months and into the future.

"In the years to come, RSNA's support for education, research and innovation in this field will grow as AI becomes an integral part of radiology practice," said Curtis P. Langlotz, M.D., Ph.D., RSNA Board Liaison for Information Technology and Annual Meeting. "RSNA will continue to educate not only radiologists but also researchers and industry scientists about AI and ML."

In August, RSNA will launch the first in a series of live, 60-minute webinars on AI and its applications for radiology, featuring internationally renowned experts. The first webinar, "Intro to AI and Machine Learning: Why All the Buzz?" will be held on Aug. 29. RSNA will offer additional AI webinars on Oct. 25, Dec. 11, and Feb.21, 2019.

Also in August, RSNA will co-sponsor the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering workshop, "Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging," to foster collaboration in applications for diagnostic medical imaging. RSNA's co-sponsors for the workshop are the American College of Radiology and the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research.

Following the successful debut of the ML Challenge in 2017, the RSNA Pneumonia Detection Challenge kicks off in August, inviting teams to develop algorithms to identify and localize pneumonia on chest X-rays, using images from a publicly available National Institutes of Health (NIH) data set. The evaluation phase will be held in October, and the most accurate submissions will be recognized in the Machine Learning Showcase at RSNA 2018 (Nov. 25 -30, McCormick Place Chicago).

The 2018 challenge will be conducted using a software platform from Kaggle, a leader in data science competitions. Kaggle will donate $30,000 to be shared among the top entries.

"This year's competition is a lot more image-heavy than in 2017," said Safwan Halabi, M.D., clinical assistant professor of radiology and pediatric radiology at Stanford and chair of the ML Data and Standards Subcommittee of the RSNA Radiology Informatics Committee (RIC). "It represents one of the largest uses of patient imaging to date for this type of competition."

The RSNA Spotlight Course, "Practical Applications in Artificial Intelligence," being held Sept. 23-24 in Paris, France, will focus on integrating AI with current medical imaging and examine how AI will impact the future of radiology. Additional AI Spotlight courses will be held in 2019 in San Francisco, Calif., and Paris, France, with more courses being developed in other regions of the world.

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