The 30th Annual Meeting of ISMRM is under way in a "hybrid" format. The physical meeting appears to be very well attended, while all posters are digital and available for remote watch. A game-like remote collaboration platform, Gather Town, was adopted in some of the scientific sessions. As far as I can tell, those who are participating in person in London are enjoying their stay. Being able to watch recorded videos for many presentations is clearly a pandemic benefit, which I hope will continue in the future meetings.
One general take of mine is that compared to several years ago, there are more sessions touching upon non-technical aspects of MRI. This year, "Small Data" issue was highlighted, and there were several historical sessions such as one in memory of Richard Ernst (who passed away last year), those looking back at historical milestones, and region-specific (India) discussions. This may well be a reflection of the fact that MRI is becoming mature as a technology.
Among corporate symposia, Canon highlighted light, flexible RF coil arrays (Shape Coil), GE showcased Deep-Learning reconstruction and high performance gradients, and Philips introduced a new whole-body scanner (MR7700) with a more powerful wide-bore gradient coil. It was said that Siemens presented heavily on 0.55T scanner and their new human Connectome gradient hardware.
