Barcelona Advanced Imaging Summit (BAIS) was created as a high-level meeting point between advanced medical imaging and sports medicine, with a multidisciplinary approach focused on the real-world challenges involved in athlete care.
Organised by HT Médica and Instituts Guirado, the course will bring together leading national and international speakers, alongside highly specialised experts from the fields of medical imaging, sports medicine and musculoskeletal pathology.
Radiologists, orthopaedic surgeons, sports medicine physicians and other specialists will share their knowledge and experience to address a key question: how can imaging support better clinical decision-making?
BAIS 2026 offers a different format, moving beyond sessions focused exclusively on technology. Innovation only becomes meaningful when it responds to a genuine clinical need.
For this reason, the different sessions will be structured around a common framework:
The aim is for every session to provide clear, practical take-home messages that can be applied in clinical practice.
BAIS 2026 starts from real-world athlete care challenges to examine what each imaging technique contributes, when it can change diagnosis, treatment or follow-up, and where its limitations lie.
Across one and a half days, the programme will cover some of today’s fastest-developing areas: new MRI and CT techniques, quantitative imaging, muscle and joint injury, artificial intelligence, functional assessment, weight-bearing imaging and comprehensive athlete health assessment.
The course also broadens the perspective beyond musculoskeletal injury to include the athlete’s heart, brain health, body composition, longitudinal monitoring and healthy longevity.
All of this will be delivered through a dynamic format combining high-level scientific presentations, real clinical cases, multidisciplinary discussion, interactive sessions and live case reading.
The ultimate aim is to bring the latest advances in medical imaging into clinical practice and move towards sports medicine that is increasingly precise, personalised and decision-oriented.
One of the cornerstones of BAIS 2026 will be the participation of leading national and international experts, selected for their experience and specialisation in key areas of medical imaging and sports medicine.
The programme will bring together specialists in advanced musculoskeletal imaging, orthopaedic surgery and traumatology, sports medicine, cardiovascular imaging, neuroradiology, artificial intelligence, biomarkers and comprehensive athlete assessment.
Combining international leaders, national specialists and highly specialised professionals from HT Médica and Instituts Guirado will provide different perspectives on the same clinical challenge and create a high-level environment for scientific discussion.
Rather than presenting technological advances alone, BAIS 2026 asks each expert to address practical questions: what information do we need, which technique can provide it and how should it influence clinical decision-making?
BAIS 2026 is intended for professionals interested in sports medicine, the musculoskeletal system and advanced imaging, particularly:
New MRI techniques, quantitative imaging, tissue biomarkers and advanced computed tomography applied to cartilage, muscle, tendon, bone and other musculoskeletal structures.
An exploration of what we are now able to see, measure and quantify that was not available in routine clinical practice only a few years ago.
Diagnosis and follow-up of muscle injuries, factors associated with clinical evolution and the risk of recurrence, quantitative cartilage assessment, and artificial intelligence applications for detection, quantification and longitudinal monitoring.
The aim will be to examine how far imaging can go beyond diagnosing an injury to help understand its evolution and support decisions regarding recovery and return to play.
A practical approach to some of the most relevant conditions affecting athletes, including:
Shoulder · Ankle and Foot · Hip and Groin · Knee · Peripheral Nerve
The sessions will focus on answering a fundamental question: what does the specialist need to know, and what should the imaging report answer?
Knee preservation, cartilage, alignment, biological treatments, ligament reconstruction and repair, biomechanics, and the integration of functional and weight-bearing imaging techniques.
A section particularly focused on multidisciplinary discussion and clinical decision-making based on real cases.
Imaging forms part of a much broader process that begins before an injury occurs.
BAIS 2026 will address athlete assessment from pre-participation evaluation and player recruitment through prevention, injury surveillance, follow-up and return to sport.
The course will also examine the physiological adaptations seen in athletes and the challenge of distinguishing between normal physiological variants, incidental findings and genuine risk factors.
Cardiovascular assessment of athletes and appropriate selection of imaging techniques.
Topics will include the differentiation between physiological adaptation and cardiomyopathy, as well as fibrosis, myocarditis, coronary anomalies and coronary artery disease in athletes.
Artificial intelligence is transforming the way imaging findings are detected, quantified and compared.
BAIS 2026 will explore its role in automation, quantitative assessment and longitudinal monitoring of athletes, as well as the opportunities and limitations involved in moving from isolated assessments towards individual imaging trajectories over time.
Muscle, bone, visceral fat and other imaging-derived parameters can provide valuable information about an athlete’s overall health.
The course will explore how these data can be integrated in a useful and responsible way into an approach focused not only on performance, but also on health and longevity, while avoiding unnecessary examinations and overdiagnosis.
One of the major debates at BAIS 2026 will focus on the role of imaging in athletes without symptoms.
What should we investigate? In which athletes? For what purpose? Which findings should change a clinical decision, and which should not?
The course will conclude with a multidisciplinary discussion on prevention, comprehensive athlete assessment and the rational use of imaging, with particular attention to the risk of incidental findings and overdiagnosis.
Upright and weight-bearing CT: imaging patients while standing, sitting and under true physiological load. Dynamic spine assessment, lower-limb alignment and pathology that may only become apparent under gravity.
Photon-counting CT and its leap forward in spatial resolution, spectral imaging and dose efficiency. What it already brings to thoracic, vascular, cardiac and musculoskeletal imaging.
High-resolution, low-dose CBCT and bone marrow oedema imaging in orthopaedic practice, from occult scaphoid fractures to postoperative follow-up.
Imaging at the highest level of sport: diagnosis and decision-making under the pressure of Olympic competition, with lessons from Rio for everyday clinical practice.
“CT-like” MRI of cortical bone, entheses and tendons using UTE and Zero Echo Time techniques, and their role in athlete assessment.
Photon-counting CT applied to the musculoskeletal system: trabecular bone, microarchitecture, entheses and bone marrow oedema at minimal radiation dose.
Deep Learning-accelerated MRI and ultra-high-field imaging: greater detail in less time, with particular value in high-volume practice and athlete screening.
Where artificial intelligence is already changing musculoskeletal diagnosis: fracture detection, quantification and workflow optimisation.
Integrating multiple imaging modalities into a single visit: greater diagnostic precision with lower cost and shorter turnaround times, AI-enabled fusion and faster return to play.
Imaging of muscle injury in elite athletes: classification systems, injury mechanisms and healing timelines.
What the team physician needs from imaging, from acute injury assessment to the decision to return to competition.
The athlete’s shoulder: instability, rotator cuff pathology and key factors associated with postoperative failure.
The athlete’s ankle and foot: instability, cartilage injuries and findings that are frequently overlooked.
Hip, groin and athletic pubalgia beyond femoroacetabular impingement.
Diffusion tensor imaging applied to the assessment of cartilage, muscle and peripheral nerves in athletes.
Knee preservation: cartilage, mechanical axis and biological treatments.
The anterior cruciate ligament in 2026: reconstruction, repair, BEAR and return to sport.
An overview of the different breast injuries that may occur during sporting activities and the corresponding diagnostic and therapeutic algorithm.
What represents physiological adaptation and what constitutes pathology in asymptomatic athletes, and how to avoid overdiagnosis in screening and pre-signing decision-making.
Towards an international consensus on muscle injury nomenclature: why a common language can change both the imaging report and the clinical decision.
Hamstring injuries, the most common injury in football: from imaging findings to the decision to return to competition.
Imaging the athlete’s metabolism: what can be screened with imaging and what it can contribute to health and performance.
The role of the radiologist in the pre-contract medical assessment: what to look for, what to report and how much weight imaging should carry in the club’s decision.
Cases and injury patterns in elite footballers: lessons from a large series in Argentinian professional football.
Musculoskeletal ageing in athletes: quantifying muscle mass and quality, as well as bone density and quality, to support both prevention and performance.
Cardiovascular screening in athletes: sudden cardiac death, cardiomyopathies and coronary artery disease in athletes; assessment with MRI and CT.
AI in sports medicine: from detection to individual risk assessment and longitudinal monitoring of athletes.
Life after retirement: early osteoarthritis, long-term sequelae and musculoskeletal health in former professional footballers.
