Precision Medicine Meets Physician Well-Being at RSNA 2025
Plenary speakers explored precision health, AI, Alzheimer's disease research and radiologist wellness
Radiology’s future may hinge on a single, unifying principle: understanding and serving the individual, whether that individual is a patient, a researcher, or a physician.
These themes were highlighted in plenary sessions held during RSNA 2025 in Chicago.
Across five talks delivered in the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place, leaders in medicine, research, technology and social science explored the ways in which imaging is reshaping precision medicine.
It's accelerating discovery through inclusive data, confronting physician burnout, redefining society’s relationship with AI and advancing the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Together, the sessions offered a broad view of how radiology’s expanding capabilities must be matched with thoughtful leadership, collaboration and compassion.
RSNA President Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD, set the tone during the Opening Session, emphasizing radiology’s dual responsibility to the global community and to the individual patient. “All of us in this room share a common humanity,” Dr. Mahmood said. “Each colleague, each patient, each life is distinct.”
That continuum—from community to self—shaped the meeting’s theme, Imaging the Individual.
Imaging at the Center of Precision Health
In his President’s Address, Dr. Mahmood described how imaging has evolved from a diagnostic tool into a cornerstone of precision medicine and, increasingly, precision health. Advances in CT, MR, PET and US now allow clinicians to characterize disease at the molecular and cellular levels, identify risk before symptoms emerge and guide increasingly targeted therapies.
“We have an increasing ability to understand how changes—in genes, in cells, in organs—can interact and lead to disease,” Dr. Mahmood said. “We can now target specific abnormalities in each individual patient—with higher fidelity.”
Reflecting on an early-career experience treating patients with metastatic melanoma, Dr. Mahmood recalled witnessing an unexpected tumor regression on a PET scan after a patient received an experimental therapy—an image that underscored how imaging-guided treatments can transform care.
He also highlighted the growing role of opportunistic screening, in which routine imaging reveals subclinical disease, extending precision medicine upstream toward prevention.
Expanding Discovery Through Inclusive Data
The promise of individualized care depends not only on technology, but also on the data used to develop it. That theme took center stage during a Sunday plenary on the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program.
Designed to close longstanding gaps in biomedical research, All of Us aims to collect health data from at least one million people in the United States, particularly individuals historically underrepresented in research. Since its launch in 2018, the program has enrolled more than 871,000 participants.
“How many diagnostic breakthroughs have we missed because the patients in our imaging studies don’t represent the patients in our waiting rooms?” asked Geoffrey Ginsburg, MD, PhD, chief medical and scientific officer of the program.
All of Us combines genomic data, electronic health records, wearable device data, physical measurements and self-reported surveys to create a multidimensional view of health and disease. As of November 2025, more than 20,000 researchers from over 1,200 institutions have used the dataset, contributing to nearly 1,100 peer-reviewed publications.
For radiologists, a key development is the program’s move to incorporate imaging data. This year, All of Us launched Eyes on Health, an imaging pilot collecting retinal and optical coherence tomography images from approximately 5,000 participants to study links between ocular findings and systemic disease.
“By linking imaging to EHRs, genomics, wearables and rich survey data in a single secure environment, All of Us will allow radiologists to study imaging phenotypes in context,” Dr. Ginsburg said.
Caring for the Caregivers
While technology and data are transforming patient care, radiologists themselves face mounting pressures that threaten sustainability, according to Tait Shanafelt, MD, Stanford Medicine’s chief wellness officer.
Speaking during a Monday plenary, Dr. Shanafelt framed burnout and related challenges as occupational hazards that demand systemic solutions.
“Radiologists are at risk of work-related injuries, including burnout, isolation and moral injury,” he said. “Yet most organizations haven’t yet approached this problem with an occupational health way of thinking.”
Research shows radiologists experience above-average rates of burnout and high mental demand compared with other specialties. While individual strategies can help, Dr. Shanafelt emphasized that most solutions must come from organizational change.
“We will not be able to ‘resilience’ our way out of this problem,” he said, noting that leadership behavior is the strongest lever for fostering a culture of well-being.
Rethinking AI’s Real Risks
As AI becomes increasingly embedded in radiology and society at large, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, PhD, MA, urged the audience to reconsider common narratives surrounding emerging technologies.
Humans, she argued during a Tuesday plenary, consistently misjudge the long-term impact of transformative tools by focusing on the wrong benchmarks.
“When we discuss AI, we’re again using the wrong benchmarks and are ignoring the consequences of scale,” Dr. Tufekci said, noting that AI is often framed as a faster version of human intelligence rather than a fundamentally different form of it.
Rather than fearing replacement by machines, she warned, society should focus on how AI’s ability to operate “well enough” at scale could destabilize systems ranging from education to governance.
While acknowledging concerns about surveillance and accountability, Dr. Tufekci expressed cautious optimism, emphasizing the need for deliberate conversations about how AI should be used.
Imaging a Brighter Future for Alzheimer’s Disease
Hope also figured prominently in a Wednesday plenary focused on neurodegenerative disease. Alexander Drzezga, MD, described how advances in PET and MRI are accelerating progress in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and treatment.
With the number of affected individuals in the U.S. expected to nearly double by 2050, imaging biomarkers that detect amyloid plaques and tau pathology are reshaping clinical trials and enabling earlier intervention.
“If you combine amyloid plus tau PET information, you may even predict who of the cognitively healthy subjects will convert to cognitive decline,” Dr. Drzezga said.
New disease-modifying therapies, improved staging tools such as the Centiloid scale, fluid biomarkers and AI-driven analysis are converging to create what he called a “bright future” for patients, and a growing demand for advanced imaging.
A Shared Direction Forward
Together, the RSNA 2025 plenary sessions painted a picture of a specialty expanding in scope and responsibility. From precision health and inclusive research to clinician well-being and ethical technology adoption, speakers emphasized that imaging’s power lies not only in innovation, but in how it is applied.
As Dr. Mahmood noted, radiology’s challenge—and opportunity—is to harness rapidly advancing knowledge while remaining grounded in the humanity of each patient and professional it serves.
For More Information
Watch these sessions with RSNA 2025 Virtual Access—visit Meeting Central or use the meeting app.
Read about the top Daily Bulletin stories from RSNA 2025.