The ISMRM Annual Meeting & Exhibition is the largest meeting dedicated to magnetic resonance imaging. For more than 25 years, the ISMRM community has grown into a vibrant, collaborative, international, and interdisciplinary society of over 7,500 clinicians, physicists, engineers, biochemists, technologists, and industry professionals from around the world who encourage and promote discovery, innovation, and clinical translation in magnetic resonance. Sessions in this meeting are created from invited faculty talks (educational sessions), reviewed abstract presentations (scientific sessions), or both (“Combined Educational and Scientific” sessions).
This program is a six (6) day CME activity in a live format. Live activities offer attendees the following benefits:
A place to showcase the latest expertise or information;
Real-time lectures by and candid discussions with top expert clinicians, scientists, and technologists—providing interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary education;
Multiple opportunities for attendees to ask questions to enhance their learning;
Dedicated time away from the home or office environment to concentrate on professional training/improvement;
Networking opportunities to strengthen working relationships and address practice issues after the event; and
A broad curriculum with breakout sessions, offering education in multiple practice areas.
The Annual Meeting provides a forum for scientific exchange, interaction between established clinicians, scientists, and trainees, and an opportunity for transfer of updated clinical and scientific information from experts to those practicing our profession worldwide.
Welcome to the 2026 Annual Meeting!
We are delighted to welcome our global community and encourage all attendees to actively engage and share their perspectives—whether you are joining us in Cape Town, at a Mini-Hub, or virtually.
Be sure to explore and participate through the One Community Hub for the Annual Meeting, where you can connect with fellow attendees, access important updates, and enhance your meeting experience.
Your contributions are what make this meeting a success, and we thank you for being part of it.
Plan your week at the Cape Town - 2026 ISMRM-ISMRT Annual Meeting and Exhibition. Browse sessions, search abstracts, and build your personalized schedule.
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Featured Sessions
Plenary lectures and keynote sessions
PLENARY SESSION
Opening Plenary
Sunday, 10 May 17:30–17:45 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Mark Griswold
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States of America
LECTURE 17:30–17:45
Welcome
Kathryn Keenan
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, United States of America
PLENARY SESSION
Lauterbur Lecture
Sunday, 10 May 17:45–18:30 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Kirsten Donald
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
LECTURE 17:45–18:30
Imaging the Developing Brain at Scale: MRI Insights into Child Neurodevelopment in Low-Resource Settings
Kirsty Donald is a professor of paediatric neurology interested in the determinants of early brain health and development in resource-limited settings like South Africa. She leads the Division of Developmental Paediatrics in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital and is Deputy Director of the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town. She is a member of the disability policy team for the South African National Department of Health and Social Development and serves the on the UNICEF expert panel for global standard-setting in early childhood development.
Her research covers investigating psychosocial and environmental factors influencing brain health and development including nutrition, infectious exposures, prenatal substance exposures, and maternal mental health, as well as the genetic and phenotypic characterization of neurodevelopmental disorders in the African context. This research is focused on using multiple imaging methods, including structural, functional, and diffusion imaging from infancy to adolescence to facilitate a deeper understanding of the impact of timing of exposures on brain development.
As a member of the UNITY network, Dr. Donald has led a range of studies using low field MRI approaches across 6 different countries in Africa and South Asia to improve neuroimaging accessibility in LMICs. She also holds multiyear grants as PI from large funders including the NIH, BGMF, and Wellcome LEAP to support this work. She is the current chair of the Pediatric Association of Pediatric Neurology and Development of South Africa and president of the International Developmental Pediatrics Association.
PLENARY SESSION
ISMRM Awards
Monday, 11 May 10:40–11:20 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Mark Griswold
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States of America
LECTURE 10:40–11:20
Senior Fellow, Gold Medal, and Distinguished Service Awards
Petra Hüppi
University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
PLENARY SESSION
MRI in Africa: Current State and Future Opportunities
Monday, 11 May 11:20–12:20 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
This plenary session will provide an overview of MRI infrastructure, research developments, and clinical applications across Africa. The presentations will highlight current challenges and explore opportunities for international collaboration to enhance MRI capacity and healthcare equity in Africa.
Target Audience: This session is intended for radiologists, MR physicists, technologists, African healthcare professionals, imaging researchers, and referring clinicians interested in MR applications, education, and research.
Learning Objectives: • Describe the history and expansion of MRI and radiology across Africa;
• Analyze and evaluate the key challenges affecting MRI access, sustainability, and clinical integration in Africa; and
• Identify opportunities for research, international collaboration, and strategic growth in MRI within the African continent.
Moderators: Houchun Hu (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, United States of America), Durgesh Dwivedi (King George's Medical University, Lucknow, India)
Martin Gathogo
kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya
LECTURE 11:20–11:40
MRI in Kenya: A Radiologist’s Perspective
Lydia Sekoli
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
LECTURE 11:40–12:00
MRI in South Africa: A Radiographer’s Perspective
Yaw Mensah
Korle Bu Teach Hospital, Accra, Ghana
LECTURE 12:00–12:20
MRI in West Africa: A Ghanaian Radiologist’s Perspective
PLENARY SESSION
NIBIB New Horizons Lecture
Tuesday, 12 May 10:40–11:10 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Maruf Adewole
Medical Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MAI Lab), Lagos, Nigeria
LECTURE 10:40–11:10
Africa Arising: Advancing MRI for Everyone, Everywhere
Maruf Adewole is a medical physicist and the Executive Director at the Medical Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MAI Lab) based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is also a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on advancing AI-driven medical imaging solutions for improved diagnosis in resource-constrained settings.
Through initiatives like NeurON, BraTS-Africa, ABreast, Haske, IMAGINE, SWIM, CONNExIN, and SPARK Academy, he promotes global health equity by advancing MR research, curating inclusive datasets, developing AI methods, building infrastructures, and developing local capacity.
His research bridges medical imaging, radiomics, oncology, and open science to improve diagnostic accessibility and healthcare outcomes across Africa and resource contained settings across the world.
PLENARY SESSION
MRI in Infectious Disease
Tuesday, 12 May 11:10–12:10 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Moderators: Vikas Gulani (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States of America), Irvin Teh (University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom), Andrew Webb (Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands)
Karen Chetcuti
Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, Blantyre, Malawi
LECTURE 11:10–11:30
MRI in Paediatric Cerebral Malaria
Allison Hays
Johns Hopkins Univeristy, Baltimore, United States of America
LECTURE 11:30–11:50
Cardiac MRI in HIV: Revealing the Hidden Burden of Cardiovascular Disease
Chandan Das
All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi, New Delhi, India
LECTURE 11:50–12:10
MRI in Tuberculosis
PLENARY SESSION
Ernst Plenary
Wednesday, 13 May 10:40–11:10 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
This session will feature a discussion between Dr. Mark Griswold, president of the ISMRM, and four young scientists and clinicians about why they are excited to be doing research in MRI along with their view of the future of MRI.
Target Audience: Anyone attending the ISMRM annual meeting.
Learning Objectives: • Identify important issues affecting young members of the ISMRM; and
• Describe future prospects for research in MRI.
Moderators: Mark Griswold (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States of America)
Louisa Fay
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, United States of America
LECTURE 10:40–11:10
Signals of Change: A Dialogue About the Future of MRI
Nader Gharbia
La rabta hospital, Tunis, Tunisia
Beatrice Lena
C.J. Gorter MRI Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands
Mina Park
Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, Republic of
PLENARY SESSION
Mesoscale MRI
Wednesday, 13 May 11:10–12:10 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Recent hardware developments focusing on ultra-high field strengths and ultra-high performance gradients from multiple vendors have pushed the limits of achievable spatial resolution for human imaging to the mesoscale (100s of microns) while yielding adequate SNR and exquisite detail and contrast. Leveraging these gains has begun to shed new insight into anatomy, function and composition of tissues. The unprecedented resolution that can now be achieved in vivo has the potential to bridge histology with MRI and address open clinical needs which are unmet at standard resolutions. This plenary aims to provide an overview into how mesoscale imaging can be useful in the clinic, what insights can be derived from the preclinical realm, and how new hardware can be fully exploited with tailored pulse sequence and reconstruction algorithms for in vivo imaging at the mesoscale.
Target Audience: This session targets both physicists and clinicians and tours the state-of-the-art in ultra-high-resolution MRI at the mesoscopic scale, its potential clinical applications in humans, insights from existing preclinical prestudies, and cutting-edge hardware and acquisition/reconstruction methods.
Learning Objectives: • Assess the limits of spatial resolution and sensitivity achievable with cutting edge hardware and software for imaging the human brain and body in vivo;
• Recognize the potential of mesoscale acquisition techniques in addressing the unmet clinical needs; and
• Differentiate between the capabilities of preclinical systems and human scanners.
Moderators: Berkin Bilgic (Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, United States of America), Christopher Nguyen (Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, United States of America), Wietske Van der Zwaag (Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Edson Amaro
Einstein Hospital Israelita, Sao Paulo, Brazil
LECTURE 11:10–11:25
What Does Mesoscale Mean and How Is It Useful in the Clinic?
Manisha Aggarwal
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States of America
LECTURE 11:25–11:40
Insights from Preclinical Imaging
Nicolas Boulant
CEA/Neurospin, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France
LECTURE 11:40–11:55
Hardware Development: State of the Art and What’s on the Horizon
Dan Wu
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
LECTURE 11:55–12:10
Acquisition/Reconstruction Tailored To Take Advantage of Cutting-Edge Hardware
PLENARY SESSION
Young Investigator Awards
Thursday, 14 May 10:50–11:10 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Petra Hüppi
University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
LECTURE 10:50–11:10
Young Investigator Awards Presentation
PLENARY SESSION
Thinking Outside the Scanner Bore: What Are We Missing in the Usual Scanner Environment?
Thursday, 14 May 11:10–12:10 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
This session will demonstrate to MR researchers and clinicians how measurements of function and physiology can be affected by the limitations and constraints of the traditional scanner environment, which we often accept and overlook.
Target Audience: All MR researchers, scientists, technologists, and clinicians.
Learning Objectives: • Recognize the impact of the traditional environment on measurements of function and physiology;
• Compare diagnostic findings between weight-bearing and supine MRI acquisitions to determine optimal imaging protocols for functional joint assessment in clinical practice;
• Analyze the physiological differences in blood flow and cerebrospinal fluid dynamics between upright and supine patient positioning to predict how scanner orientation impacts measurement accuracy and clinical interpretation; and
• Evaluate the capabilities and limitations of non-traditional MRI hardware designs to formulate implementation strategies that address both technical performance and regulatory considerations for clinical adoption.
Moderators: Kevin Chan (Stanford University, Stanford, United States of America), Jana Delfino (US Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, United States of America), Shella Keilholz (Emory/Georgia Tech, Atlanta, United States of America)
Emily McWalter
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
LECTURE 11:10–11:30
Musculoskeletal MRI Needs To Capture Joints in Action
Tosiaki Miyati
Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
LECTURE 11:30–11:50
Effects of Gravity and Posture on Functional and Morphological Changes in MRI
MICHAEL GARWOOD
Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Dept. of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States of America
LECTURE 11:50–12:10
Unconventional Approaches Toward More Compact and Transportable MRI Scanners
PLENARY SESSION
Closing Plenary
Thursday, 14 May 18:00–18:20 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Petra Hüppi
University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
LECTURE 18:00–18:20
Closing Remarks
PLENARY SESSION
Mansfield Lecture
Thursday, 14 May 18:20–18:50 SAST Plenary Hall (Halls 8-10) | CTICC 2
Richard Bowtell
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
LECTURE 18:20–18:50
Playing Around with Magnetic Fields with Some Unsung Heroes of MR
Richard Bowtell is professor of physics and Director of the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at the University of Nottingham. After taking a degree in natural sciences in Cambridge, he joined Nottingham in 1984 as a Ph.D. student working under the supervision of Sir Peter Mansfield. He has been a faculty member of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy since 1989 and served as Head of School from 2008 to 2014.
His research is focused on the development and application of new techniques and hardware for biomedical imaging. He is a Fellow of the ISMRM and of the UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP), a deputy editor of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and past-president of the European Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology. He was awarded the IOP’s James Joule Medal and Prize in 2020. The Cape Town meeting will be the 38th Annual Meeting of the ISMRM (or its precursor, the SMRM) that he is happy to have attended.
The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine designates this live activity for a preliminary maximum of 38.75 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
The American Medical Association has an agreement of mutual recognition of Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits with the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS), the accreditation body for European countries. Physicians interested in converting AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ to UEMS-European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education CME credits (ECMECs) should contact the UEMS at mutualrecognition@uems.eu.
Activities certified for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ that take place within a member country of the UEMS are not eligible for conversion to ECMECs under this agreement.
ARRT Accreditation
The International Society for MR Radiographers & Technologists (ISMRT), a section of the ISMRM, is recognized by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) as a Recognized Continuing Education Evaluation Mechanism (RCEEM). This event offers a preliminary maximum of 18.25 Category A CE Credits.
CPD credit endorsement is through the Australian Society of Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy (ASMIRT) CPD Accreditation, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists (RANZCR), the New Zealand Institute of Medical Radiation Technology (NZIMRT), and the College of Radiographers (CPD NOW), United Kingdom.
The ISMRT Annual Meeting is endorsed by the College of Radiographers (CPD NOW) and may help to support the following outcomes of CPD Now:
[CoR 02] Knowledge base
[CoR 03] Work safely
[CoR 06] Manage knowledge/information
[CoR 07] High-quality healthcare/education services
[CoR 09] Inter-professional/-agency working or learning
[CoR 11] Workforce development or staff governance
[CoR 12] Service design
[CoR 19] Evidence to support practice
[CoR 20] Knowledge and skills in audit /research
Ensuring balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all Continuing Medical Education programs; and
Presenting CME activities that promote improvements or quality in healthcare and are independent of commercial interests.
The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) adheres to the policies and guidelines, including the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited CE, stating those activities where continuing education credits are awarded must be balanced, independent, objective, and scientifically rigorous. All persons in a position to control the content of an accredited continuing education program provided by the ISMRM are required to disclose all financial relationships with any ineligible company within the past 24 months to the ISMRM. All financial relationships reported are identified as relevant and mitigated by the ISMRM in advance of delivery of the activity to learners. The content of this activity was vetted by the ISMRM to assure objectivity and that the activity is free of commercial bias. All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated by the ISMRM.
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Posters & Exhibits
Digital and traditional poster sessions, exhibition hall
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