ECR 2026 AI Industry Landscape
The European Congress of Radiology (ECR) 2026 in Vienna is not only a scientific programme, it is also a high-signal market map. Exhibitors reflect what hospitals are buying now, what is being integrated into workflows, and where vendors believe demand is heading.
We start from the official exhibitor list, then feed each exhibitor record into GPT-5.2 for structured tagging (vendor type, region, modality focus, clinical areas, and whether the exhibitor is explicitly AI focused). We then aggregate those tags into distributions and cross-tabs.
The list contains 224 exhibitors in total. 20 listings do not include a description, so the analysis below focuses on 204 exhibitors.
For the programme-side view of ECR 2026, see ECR 2026 AI Landscape.
Highlights at a glance
Before diving into categories and geography, it helps to anchor on a few baseline facts that frame the rest of the page.
- 53 of 204 exhibitors are tagged as AI-focused (26.0%).
- Largest vendor bucket: Imaging OEM (63 exhibitors).
- Largest region: EU/UK (141 exhibitors).
- Top country by count: Germany (43 exhibitors).
- AI positioning varies by category: AI software is 90.0% AI-tagged, while Imaging OEM is 9.5% AI-tagged.
The KPI snapshot below sets the baseline for everything that follows. “AI-focused” here means the exhibitor description and positioning are explicitly centered on AI, not merely that the company offers AI as one feature among many.
Vendor mix
Let’s start with what the exhibitor floor is made of. A treemap is a good fit here because it shows part-to-whole structure at a glance, especially when there are many categories.
The three largest buckets are Imaging OEM, AI software, and Accessories/Hardware. Together they represent 61.8% of the analyzed exhibitors, which is useful context when you interpret the AI density view next.
Tile area is proportional to exhibitor count.
This composition is the “installed base” layer of the market. It also matches what we saw on the programme side: many ECR 2026 AI sessions focus on integration, workflow, and operational readiness. For the session view, see Where AI shows up in the programme and Operational footprint.
AI density by vendor type
Counts tell you what is big. This chart tells you what is AI-dense. Specifically, it shows the percentage of exhibitors in each vendor type that are tagged as AI-focused.
To keep the signal clean, we exclude AI software here and focus on the rest of the exhibitor ecosystem, where “AI-first” positioning is optional rather than implied by the category name.
AI software is excluded. AI share is computed within each vendor type (AI-focused exhibitors ÷ total exhibitors in that category).
The spread is uneven. Workflow and infrastructure categories tend to sit in the middle, reflecting vendors that increasingly frame their value around deployment, orchestration, and operational integration. In contrast, large hardware-led buckets such as Imaging OEM remain much less likely to present as AI-first, even if AI capabilities are embedded across product lines.
This lines up with the programme-side picture: AI sessions split between clinical topics and structural themes like integration and informatics. See Clinical versus structural focus inside AI.
Geography and AI adoption
Next is geography. The chart below splits each region into AI-focused versus non-AI exhibitors, so you can see both total footprint and how strongly each region leans into AI-first positioning.
The largest region in absolute terms drives the most exhibitors, but the AI share can still vary. This is why it helps to keep both dimensions in view: footprint and positioning.
Market structure: vendor type by region
This matrix shows where each vendor category concentrates across region groups. Darker cells mean more exhibitors in that vendor type within that region.
Counts are exhibitors tagged with both the vendor type and the region group.
This helps explain why region-level AI density looks the way it does. Regions with a heavier workflow and enterprise IT presence tend to surface more integration-oriented exhibitors, which also aligns with the programme’s operational footprint described in Operational footprint.
Technology footprint
Exhibitors often anchor their messaging around modalities. Because modality tags are multi-label, the cleanest first view is frequency: which modalities appear most often across exhibitor descriptions.
Modality tags are not mutually exclusive. A single exhibitor can appear in multiple modality buckets.
The top of the list is led by high-volume modalities and platform language, which is consistent with where procurement budgets concentrate and where AI is often commercialised through integration into existing imaging stacks. For the clinical-demand angle, see Clinical AI by subspecialty.
Country concentration
To close, we look at where exhibitors come from. A world map gives a quick sense of geographic clustering and the long tail of participating countries.
The exhibitor base is led by Germany, followed by China and the United States, then a long tail of European countries. This matches ECR’s role as a European hub while still attracting strong participation from major manufacturing and software ecosystems.
Overall direction
Overall, the exhibitor floor suggests a market where AI is a meaningful slice, but not the majority. The strongest “AI-first” concentration sits in software-native categories, while hardware and workflow infrastructure continue to define the bulk of the floor.
Read this alongside Overall direction in the programme report to connect “who is on the floor” with “what is on the programme.”
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