Attendance at RSNA23, the annual conference of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based Radiological Society of North America, held every year at Chicago’s McCormick Place, was flat this year compared to attendance at RSNA22, with the numbers within a few hundred of each other. As of Monday, Nov. 27, total in-person registration was 34,175, of whom 17,711 were classified as professionals.
As we reported on the Monday of RSNA 2022—Monday, Nov. 28, 2022—attendance last year was 34,385, a 61.4-percent increase over the 21,300 registered on this equivalent day in the conference in 2021. Among the 34,385, 19,485 were registered as professionals.
This year’s attendance figure, virtually the same as last year’s, might presage ongoing future attendance levels; RSNA22 saw a huge increase over 2021, as 2021 had been the first year of in-person attendance since 2020, when the conference had been forced to go virtual during the depths of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s conference agenda was replete with sessions focused on artificial intelligence (AI), something noted by Howard B. Chrisman , M.D., president and CEO at Northwestern Memorial HealthCare in Chicago, during the conference’s opening session on Sunday. As Nick Klenske reported the Daily Bulletin, the conference’s official publication, Dr. Chrisman told the audience in the Aire Crown Theatre that “Radiology is at an inflection point as new technologies and AI in particular rapidly transform our field.” Chrisman told his fellow radiologists that he was optimistic about radiologists’ collective ability to flex with the times. “Before we were even a specialty, people who worked with X-rays were referred to as being ‘irrational,’ ‘irritable,’ and ‘prone to mental disturbances. Yet despite this start, the fact that we are all here today is proof that we’ve been able to persist and that we will continue to persist. The secret, going forward, he said, will be this: “While history shows that change is often disruptive, I believe radiologists are well-prepared thanks to our agile nature.”
