The RSNA has named the winners of its 2024 Lumbar Spine Degenerative Classification AI Challenge.
The challenge explored whether AI can be used to aid in the detection and classification of degenerative spine conditions using lumbar spine MR images. The curated and annotated dataset, developed in collaboration with the American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR), included images from eight sites across five continents.
The challenge, launched in May and hosted on a platform provided by Kaggle (an Alphabet company), attracted 1,874 teams from around the world, which the RSNA said is a new record for participation. Competing teams developed models to detect and classify degenerative spine conditions using lumbar spine MR images.
The nine teams submitting the highest-scoring algorithms shared $50,000 in total prize money. The winning teams included the following:
- Avengers
- IanPan-Kevin-Yuji-Bartley
- SonySpine s & tkmn & Moyashii
- SPINE CHART
- Two people
- NVSpine
- HLIP
- K_mataro
- Adam Narai
The challenge includes an Educational Merit award, which recognizes a winner from among the top nine teams whose entry is deemed outstanding in clarity, completeness, organization, and efficiency of code. The two teams that won this award were SonySpine s & tkmn & Moyashii and Avengers.
Winners will be recognized in the AI Theater on December 2.
![A normal mammogram confirmed by three-year radiologic follow-up illustrates reader-marked regions of interest (ROIs) during (A) unaided (round 1) and (B) artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted (round 2) reading. Each colored dot represents an ROI for recall by a human reader. Readers could mark more than one ROI per case, represented by multiple dots of the same color. During AI-assisted reading, the AI system displayed three visible prompts: two with suspicion of malignancy scores of 35% (left mediolateral oblique [L MLO] and craniocaudal [L CC]) and one with a suspicion of malignancy score of 10% (right craniocaudal [R CC]), shown as polygonal overlays. Without AI, six of 10 readers (60%) marked a false-positive ROI. With AI assistance, this fell to two of 10 (20%). R MLO = right mediolateral oblique.](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/07/2026-07-14-radiology-mammogram-ai-auto-bias.H0bYO8QlWs.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
