The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) is holding its most significant annual gathering of 2026 in one of North America’s largest medical hubs, and the program arriving in Toronto this week carries a scientific weight that makes it the primary continuing education event on the interventional radiology calendar. The 51st edition of the SIR Annual Scientific Meeting is running from April 11 to 15 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and it lands at a moment when the specialty is navigating a rapid convergence of artificial intelligence, robotic-assisted procedures, and expanding clinical indications that are reshaping what image-guided therapy can offer patients. For any practitioner working in IR, whether as a trainee or a seasoned attending, the Toronto edition of the SIR meeting is where the discipline is being publicly redefined for the next cycle of practice.
What is the SIR 2026 annual scientific meeting and where does it take place in Toronto?
The SIR 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting is being held April 11 to 15 in Toronto, Ontario, and this year’s theme is “Creating communities. Transforming care.” The venue is the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, located at 222 Bremner Boulevard. The meeting is organised and governed by the Society of Interventional Radiology, a nonprofit professional medical society headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. The Metro Toronto Convention Centre is one of the largest dedicated convention facilities in Canada, and its capacity and transport links make it a practical fit for an event of this scale. The meeting is the 51st in the society’s history, placing it among the longer-running medical specialty gatherings in North American medicine. Full meeting registration covers access to all live educational and plenary sessions across the five-day programme. One-day passes are available, and a medical student registration rate applies, with special programming for students scheduled on Saturday April 11.
Who runs the Society of Interventional Radiology and what is its governance structure?
The Society of Interventional Radiology is a nonprofit professional medical society representing over 8,000 practicing interventional radiology physicians, trainees, medical students, scientists, and clinical associates. The society is based in Fairfax, Virginia, and operates with an elected board structure drawn from its physician membership. Its official publication is the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology, published monthly, which serves as the primary peer-reviewed outlet for the specialty in North America. The society also maintains a political action committee, SIRPAC, which advocates on reimbursement and access issues before Congress and federal agencies. The SIR Foundation supports research development within the specialty, funding investigators and fostering development of innovative therapies. The organisation’s governance has remained stable in recent years, though its strategic direction has shifted toward workforce pipeline building and formalising IR as a fully independent clinical specialty rather than a diagnostic subspecialty, a trajectory that has implications for residency structures and hospital credentialing.
How large is the SIR annual scientific meeting and what does the scientific programme include in 2026?
The SIR Annual Scientific Meeting draws a community of more than 4,000 IR professionals, ranging from those in training to seasoned experts. The 2026 scientific programme includes nearly 400 competitively selected oral presentations and 120 poster presentations of peer-reviewed scientific abstracts. That volume of peer-reviewed content places the meeting in the upper tier of specialty medical conferences by presentation count. The meeting’s educational objectives include demonstrating high-quality practice in a team environment, covering the latest basic and clinical research, evaluating new equipment, and discussing societal, political, and economic issues important to the IR community. The programme spans plenary sessions, skills-based workshops, and dedicated tracks aligned to specific career stages and practice types. Dedicated learning tracks cover trainees, early-career interventional radiologists, administrators, and allied health professionals. The Expo component runs concurrently across multiple days, giving attendees direct access to the device and pharmaceutical companies supplying the field.
What are the key scientific sessions and research topics at SIR 2026 in Toronto?
Interventional oncology is among the most densely programmed areas of the Toronto meeting, with sessions addressing locoregional therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma, thermal ablation of lung tumours, and the expanding use of yttrium-90 radioembolization. Among the oncology sessions, topics include changing utilisation of locoregional therapies for HCC across the United States, transarterial radioembolization with yttrium-90 glass microspheres in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and portal vein thrombosis, and efficacy of yttrium-90 radiation segmentectomy for ablative treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. Robotics in interventional radiology is also featured as a standalone session within the oncology programme, reflecting growing industry and clinical interest in assisted procedures. Sessions covering ablation of colorectal liver metastases include subsessions on which patients can be cured by ablation and ablation trials affecting survival. Lung oncology is similarly represented, with presentations covering pulmonary function following thermal ablation, predictors of local recurrence after image-guided thermal ablation for non-small cell lung carcinoma, and quality-of-life outcomes from patient-reported studies. Beyond oncology, the programme covers venous interventions, peripheral arterial disease, dialysis access, musculoskeletal interventions, and women’s health, giving the Toronto meeting a breadth that few specialist conferences in any field can match.
Who is delivering the 2026 Charles T. Dotter Lecture and why does it matter for the specialty?
The 2026 Dr. Charles T. Dotter Lecture will be delivered by Professor Andrew Holden, MBChB, FRANZCR, EBIR, ONZM, director of the interventional radiology service at Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand. The Dotter Lecture is the most prestigious named lecture in the SIR annual meeting programme and is named for Charles Dotter, the Oregon physician widely credited with founding the discipline of interventional radiology through his development of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty techniques in the 1960s. The selection of a non-American speaker for the Dotter Lecture reflects the increasingly international composition of the specialty’s leadership, consistent with the meeting’s broader framing around cross-border community building. Holden’s appointment to the Auckland City Hospital interventional radiology service has positioned him as a leading voice in vascular and endovascular work across the Asia-Pacific region.
How does the SIR annual meeting compare to other major interventional radiology conferences worldwide?
The SIR Annual Scientific Meeting operates as the largest professional gathering of interventional radiologists in North America, a position it has held since the 1970s. Its nearest peer on the global calendar is the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe’s annual congress, known as CIRSE, which draws a broadly similar attendance and operates as the primary European counterpart. The European Conference on Interventional Oncology 2026, organised by CIRSE, is scheduled for Basel, Switzerland, from April 26 to 30, 2026, placing it just days after SIR 2026 concludes and creating a brief window in which major IR research will be presented at both events within the same fortnight. RSNA, the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting, is a far larger event by total attendance but covers all of radiology, and the IR community’s attendance at RSNA is diluted across dozens of subspecialty streams. The SIR meeting, by contrast, is single-specialty and delivers a higher density of IR-specific content per day than any alternative on the calendar. For industry exhibitors, the SIR Expo is the primary North American venue for launching interventional devices and software directly to the practitioner community.
What is the history of the Society of Interventional Radiology and how did the annual meeting begin?
The Society of Interventional Radiology was founded in 1973 as the Society of Cardiovascular Radiology by an active group in the field who wanted to further develop interventional aspects of radiology. It changed its name to the Society of CardioVascular and Interventional Radiology in 1983, and in April 2002 the name was changed to Society of Interventional Radiology to emphasise the expanding role of interventional radiology that is no longer limited to the cardiovascular system. That naming history tracks the discipline’s own evolution: a technique-driven subspecialty of vascular radiology in its early decades gradually became a clinically independent specialty capable of managing patients across oncology, vascular medicine, women’s health, and pain management. The annual meeting has mirrored that expansion, growing from a relatively compact vascular-focused gathering in the 1970s into the multi-track, multi-discipline event it is today. The Toronto meeting, as the 51st edition, represents five decades of uninterrupted institutional knowledge accumulation and makes the SIR one of the longer-tenured specialty societies in American medicine.
What do interventional radiologists need to know about registration and logistics for SIR 2026?
Full meeting registration provides access to all live educational sessions and the Expo from Saturday through Wednesday, April 11 to 15. One-day passes are available and can be purchased on-site. The SIR 2026 app is available through the Apple App Store and Google Play, compatible with both iOS and Android, and functions as a virtual programme book allowing attendees to build personalised schedules, track sessions, and submit feedback on educational content. The app launches approximately one week before the meeting opens. CME credit claims are processed through the SIR Learning Center after the meeting concludes, not on-site, which is a logistical detail that regularly catches attendees. Cancellations submitted in writing by March 20, 2026, received a refund less a $100 administrative fee, and no refunds are being issued after that date. A virtual live option exists for those unable to travel to Toronto, offering access to a curated selection of live and pre-recorded sessions, though the virtual format does not replicate the Expo or hands-on workshop access that forms a significant part of the on-site value for device-focused attendees.
What role is robotics and AI playing in the interventional radiology sessions at SIR 2026?
Robotics and artificial intelligence are no longer fringe topics in the SIR programme. They now feature across multiple dedicated sessions and appear as analytical threads woven through oncology, vascular, and procedural skills content. Quantum Surgical, which specialises in robotics and AI, has developed the Epione robotic platform for treating early-stage tumours. Epione assists physicians in performing percutaneous tumour ablations, where one or more needles are inserted through the skin to treat the tumour. The company is among the exhibitors at SIR 2026, bringing robotics-assisted ablation directly to the clinical audience attending the Toronto meeting.
The Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology published a forward-looking collection in late 2025 examining future IR science including telerobotics using artificial intelligence and augmented reality, nanoparticle-based therapy, image-guided gene and cell therapy, and precision immunotherapy for cancer. That publication framing the specialty’s horizon research appeared just ahead of the Toronto meeting and sets an intellectual context for how the field is orienting itself. The robotics sessions within the SIR 2026 oncology and non-vascular tracks are expected to feature data from early robotic ablation platforms, comparative outcomes between conventional and robotic-assisted procedures, and regulatory pathway discussions as the FDA clears more AI-adjacent devices for interventional use.
What are the latest developments in interventional radiology research being presented at SIR 2026?
The most clinically significant research at the Toronto meeting clusters around three areas: liver cancer treatment, lung tumour ablation, and venous thromboembolism management. On liver cancer, presentations include real-world data from the PROACTIF study on TARE with yttrium-90 glass microspheres in HCC patients with portal vein thrombosis, a systematic review and meta-analysis on yttrium-90 radiation segmentectomy for HCC, and a national cancer database analysis comparing surgery to contemporary IR therapies for early-stage HCC. On lung ablation, a prospective study on pulmonary function following thermal ablation of lung tumours is among the featured presentations, alongside a study examining predictors of local recurrence after image-guided thermal ablation for stage IA non-small cell lung carcinoma.
On the device side, histotripsy, which uses ultrasonic cavitation to destroy tissue without heat, is featuring across multiple oncology sessions as an emerging modality pushing the boundary of what thermal ablation has traditionally offered. The FDA’s medical device adverse event database is also being drawn on, with a presentation examining reported adverse events from histotripsy liver cancer use, reflecting a regulatory transparency trend increasingly visible at specialty conferences. RenovoRx is also presenting data at the meeting, with a Monday April 13 session covering what PET/CT imaging reveals after transarterial microperfusion for pancreatic cancer.
What is the outlook for interventional radiology as a specialty beyond the SIR 2026 meeting?
Interventional radiology is entering a two-to-three year window with strong structural tailwinds. The formal establishment of a standalone IR residency pathway in the United States, separate from diagnostic radiology, is producing a cohort of clinically trained IR physicians who enter practice with patient management skills that earlier generations largely acquired after training. That pipeline change is already influencing hospital employment models and department structures. The growing clinical evidence base for IR therapies in oncology, particularly ablation and embolization as alternatives or complements to surgery, is expanding the specialty’s referral base at a time when multidisciplinary tumour boards are increasingly including IR as a standard participant.
Robotics and AI will accelerate capability expansion, particularly for procedures requiring extreme precision in anatomically constrained spaces, and the data landscape around these technologies is shifting from feasibility studies toward comparative outcomes, exactly the evidence level that changes clinical guidelines. The SIR Foundation’s research funding activity and the journal’s forward-looking publication on future IR science both suggest an organisation deliberately positioning itself ahead of that curve. For trainees entering the specialty in 2026, the Toronto meeting represents not just a professional development opportunity but a snapshot of a discipline with broader institutional authority than at any point in its fifty-year history.
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