Together We Can Make a Difference

The RSNA/AAPM Symposium, presented by Guang- Hong Chen, PhD, Maryellen L. Giger, PhD, and Gillian M. Newstead, MD, will center on successful collaboration between radiologists and physicists in technical developments and clinical translations in medical imaging.

Dr. Chen is a professor of medical physics and radiology at  the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is recognized as one of the most innovative leaders in X-ray and CT imaging with more than 200 scientific publications and more than 40 issued patents. His research has been well funded by federal agencies and industrial partners across a broad spectrum of topics including hardware imaging system development, reconstruction algorithm development, and translation of systems and algorithms into clinical practice to advance medical diagnosis and image-guided interventions. A dedicated educator, Dr. Chen has mentored more than 30 PhD students. He received the Kellett Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Wisconsin and was elected a fellow of the AAPM and American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering. He was inducted into the Academic Council of Distinguished Investigators by the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research in 2021. Dr. Chen has served the medical imaging community as a leader in many professional organizations including as scientific program director at AAPM and SPIE, and as a member of the International Society for Computed Tomography board of directors. Currently, Dr. Chen serves RSNA and AAPM as the chair of the Physics Subspecialty Committee.

Dr. Giger is the A.N. Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor of Radiology, the Committee on Medical Physics, and the College at the University of Chicago. She is also the vice-chair of radiology (basic  science research) and the prior director of the Graduate Program in Medical Physics/chair of the Committee on Medical Physics. She has worked for decades on computer-aided diagnosis, machine learning, and deep learning in medical imaging for cancer, thoracic diseases including COVID-19, neuro-imaging and other diseases diagnosis and management. Her AI research in breast cancer for risk assessment, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic response has yielded various translated components, and she has used these “virtual biopsies” in imaging-genomics association studies. She has extended her AI in medical imaging research to include the analysis of COVID-19 on CT and chest radiographs and is the contact principal investigator on the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)-funded Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC; midrc.org), a collaboration of RSNA, the American College of Radiology, and the  American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) that is hosted at the University of Chicago.

Over the course of her career, Dr. Giger has published more than 260 peer-reviewed articles and obtained more than 30 patents. She has mentored over 100 graduate students, residents, medical students and undergraduate students. She was cofounder of Quantitative Insights, now Qlarity Imaging, which produces QuantX, the first FDA-cleared, machine-learning driven CADx (AI-aided) system. She is a former president of AAPM and of SPIE, a member of the NIH NIBIB Advisory Council and editor- in-chief of the Journal of Medical Imaging.

Widely recognized for her contributions to the field, Dr. Giger has been awarded the RSNA Outstanding Researcher Award, the AAPM William D. Coolidge Gold Medal, the SPIE Director’s Award, and the SPIE Harrison H. Barrett Award in Medical Imaging. She has also been recognized with the Society of Directors of Academic Medical Physics Programs Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gillian M. Newstead, MD, FACR, is a breast radiologist who has directed her work for more than three decades toward improving methods for the screening and diagnosis of breast cancer. She has held the position of Section Chief of Breast Radiology at both at the New York University School of Medicine and the University of Chicago. As a professor of radiology at the University of Chicago she has conducted translational research focused on breast MRI including novel methods of acquisition and quantitative image analysis, working with Dr. Giger and her team of medical physicists. She has developed one of the country’s leading investigative breast imaging programs, with work supported by grants from the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, industry and philanthropic sources, while maintaining a cutting-edge clinical breast imaging section. She has published over 80 articles in medical and radiology journals and authored the book Breast MRI Interpretation, including over 2,800 images with access to large downloadable training datasets. A leader in the field of breast cancer imaging, she has made critical contributions to the development of new strategies for breast cancer management. She was awarded the Paul C. Hodges Excellence Award at the University of Chicago in 2021.