Each year, the UC San Francisco Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging looks forward to the Imaging Research Symposium, an opportunity to highlight the breadth and depth of innovative research being done in the department. The 18^th Annual Symposium took place virtually on November 3, 2021 with welcome remarks delivered by Chair Christopher Hess, MD, PhD, and Vice Chair of Research Sharmila Majumdar, PhD.

Podium Presentations

There were two sessions of podium presentations featuring 16 speakers. Each speaker presented for eight minutes, followed by two minutes for audience questions. Thank you to Janine Lupo, PhD and Joseph Leach, MD, PhD for moderating the first session and Michael Ohliger, MD, PhD and Henry VanBrocklin, PhD for moderating the second session.

Podium Presentation Awardees

Podium presentations covered topics including deep learning (for both imaging technology and clinical application), breast imaging, clinical imaging, nuclear medicine, radioligand therapy, tumor imaging, cardiovascular imaging, hyperpolarized C13 imaging, ultra-high field MRI and functional neuroimaging. Thank you to all presenters for sharing your interesting, important and innovative work.

There were three winners this year for best podium presentation:

• Jingjia Chen, "MRI of postmortem human brain at 180- m isotropic resolution on Berkeley NexGen 7T scanner"

• Madina Halim, clinical research coordinator for her presentation on “Self-compassion as a mediator between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex connectivity and depressive symptoms in adolescents”

• Valentina Pedoia, PhD, assistant professor, for her presentation on “AI is a Learner and AI is a Teacher: DL-Based Chronic Pain Imaging Biomarkers Discovery”

Poster Sessions

This year’s poster sessions were divided by topic into six virtual poster sessions featuring a three-minute presentation from each poster presenter and the opportunity for audience questions directed to each poster presenter. Thank you to Pavithra Viswanath, PhD, Michael Evans, PhD, Valentina Pedoia, PhD, Jae Ho Sohn, MD, MS, Yan Li, PhD, Peder Larson, PhD, Myriam Chaumeil, PhD, Linda Chao, PhD, Courtney Lawhn Heath, MD and Thienkhai Vu, MD for moderating these sessions. Also, thank you to all presenters across each category.

The Best Poster Awardees for each category are as follows:

1. Cancer  
Sasank Sakhamuri, UCSF Masters in Biomedical Imaging (MSBI) student, LIP as a biomarker and drug target in prostate cancer

Wen Li, PhD, assistant researcher, Early prediction of pathologic complete response by diffusion-weighted MRI for breast cancer undergoing immunotherapy

2. Deep Learning 
Bruno Astuto, PhD, computational and data scientist with the UCSF Center for Intelligent Imaging (ci²), Human in the Loop: Improving the Quality of Automatic Semantic Multi-Class Segmentation of Knee Cartilage in MRIs with Continuous Learning

3. Hyperpolarized C13 Imaging 
Sana Vaziri, postdoctoral scholar, Evaluation of effects of perfusion on HP[1- 13C]pyruvate imaging parameters in healthy volunteers and patients with glioma

4. Methodological and Device Development or Testing 
Javier Caravaca Rodriguez, PhD, assistant professional researcher, In vivo imaging of Ac-225 with collimatorless gamma cameras

5. Neuroimaging 
Nikhil Deveshwar, research assistant, Reproducibility of brain ultrashort-T2* component measurements in healthy volunteers

Ben Sipes, assistant specialist, Resting state functional connectivity subnetwork relates to prosocial behavior and compassion in adolescents

6. Novel Methods for Clinical and Preclinical Studies
Yan Li, PhD, assistant professor, Incidence of sarcoidosis-like reaction in patients treated with immunotherapy

Kenneth Gao, graduate student researcher, Large-scale analysis of meniscus morphology as risk factor to incidence of osteoarthritis

Bruce Hasegawa Award 2021

This year’s Bruce Hasegawa Awardee is Celine Taglang, PhD, postdoctoral scholar with a background in chemistry who joined UCSF in 2016. Since August 2020, Dr. Taglang has worked with the Cancer Metabolic Imaging and Therapy Lab, led by Pavithra Viswanath, PhD and Sabrina Ronen, PhD (principal investigators). Her research is focused on deuterium magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging with intravenous infusion of nonradioactive 2H-labeled substrates to better reveal metabolism in the brain of animal models and differences between normal brain and tumor tissue. She presented this work at this year’s Symposium.

Rahul Desikan Award 2021

This year’s Rahul Desikan Awardee is Andreas Rauschecker, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Neuroradiology Section. In research, Dr. Rauschecker focuses on using modern technology to understand the brain in conditions of health and disease and has received numerous honors for his work, including awards from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR). Dr. Rauschecker has also been recognized as a mentor and received the 2019-2020 UCSF Inquiry Curriculum Long-Term Mentor Award after being nominated by his mentee. 

A special thanks goes out to UCSF Radiology’s Seminar and Presentation Committee, led by co-chairs Janine Lupo, PhD (associate professor) and Michael Ohliger, MD, PhD (associate professor in residence), Courtney Lawhn Heath, MD and Joseph (An) Vu, PhD (scientific organizers) and Cindy Cheng, communication and events manager.