May 2025
Yu-Pei Tseng, Ph.D., matched at Indiana University
BIRTLab alumna Yu-Pei Tseng, Ph.D., has matched with the Indiana University Medical Physics Residency Program. Congratulations, Dr. Tseng!
April 2025
Lixiang Guo, M.S., awarded travel grant
Congratulations to Lixiang for being awarded the 2025 American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Expanding Horizons Travel Grant, which is designed to provide students and trainees with an opportunity to broaden the scope of scientific meetings attended in their career.
February 2025
Lixiang Guo, M.S., selected as a finalist for the Early Career Investigators Symposium
Congratulations to Lixiang for being selected as a finalist for the Early Career Investigators Symposium at the 2025 Southwest Regional Chapter of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (SWAAPM) Annual Meeting for his research, “Comprehensive investigation of HYPERSCINT RP-FLASH scintillator for electron FLASH research.” Co-authors include Banghao Zhou, M.S., Yi-Chun Tsai, M.S., Kai Jiang, Ph.D., Viktor Iakovenko, Ph.D., and Ken Kang-Hsin Wang, Ph.D.
January 2025
Ciara Newman accepted to UT Southwestern graduate school
Congratulations to Ciara Newman for being accepted to UT Southwestern's Basic Biomedical Sciences Program for fall 2025.
December 2024
Dr. Zhishen Tong accepted residency position
Congratulations to Zhishen Tong, Ph.D., for accepting an offer from UT Southwestern as a medical physics resident for the class of 2025.
November 2024
Paper selected as "Editor's Choice" in Medical Physics
Congratulations to Lixiang! The paper, "A microscopic oxygen transport model for ultra-high dose rate radiotherapy in vivo: The impact of physiological conditions on FLASH effect," was selected as "Editor's Choice" in Biological Physics and Response Prediction in November's issue of Medical Physics.
Publication in Medical PhysicsOctober 2024
Top download
Congratulations to Drs. Zijian Deng and Xiangkun Xu! The paper, “In vivo bioluminescence tomography-guided system for pancreatic cancer radiotherapy research,” is on the top download list from Biomedical Optical Express.
Publication in Biomedical Optical ExpressOctober 2024
Publication: Biomedical Optical Express
Congratulations to Drs. Beichuan Deng, Zhishen Tong and Xiangkun Xu on achieving a milestone with our first AI-driven advancement in bioluminescence tomography reconstruction. Dr. Deng proposed an innovative method using a self-supervised learning approach to overcome the traditionally ill-posed nature of optical tomography, enabling quantitative imaging for cancer research. The work is now published in a special issue of Biomedical Optical Express.
Publication in Biomedical Optical Express
September 2024
Publication: Medical Physics
Congratulations to BIRTLab! Our first FLASH oxygen modeling work has been published in Medical Physics. While the FLASH mechanism remains a topic of debate, we are offering a new perspective. We welcome any feedback.
Publication in Medical Physics
August 2024
Dr. Beichuan Deng gives talk at UTD
Beichuan Deng, Ph.D., was invited to talk at UT Dallas' Physics Colloquium. His talk was titled, "Self-supervised hybrid neural network to achieve quantitative bioluminescence tomography for cancer research."
Read more about the talk
July 2024
Dr. Jack Xu's farewell party
Xiangkun (Jack) Xu, Ph.D., has been with BIRTLab for more than seven-and-a-half years. We appreciate his dedication and effort in building a strong foundation for our group, and we wish him the best of luck in his medical physics residency and career as a medical physicist!
May 2024
BIRTLab BBQ party
BIRTLab prime ribeye celebration.
March 2024
Dr. Jack Xu accepted residency position
Congratulations to Xiangkun (Jack) Xu, Ph.D., for accepting an offer from Corewell/Beaumont Health as a medical physics resident for the class of 2024.
November 2023
Dr. Tong received PDA Travel Award
Zhishen Tong, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow, received UT Southwestern Medical Center's Postdoctoral Association (PDA) Travel Award for the 2024 SPIE Photonics West Conference. The work that earned him this honor was entitled, “Theoretical and numerical studies of single-pixel imaging for high-sensitivity bioluminescence imaging and tomography.”
October 2023
Paper selected as "Editor's Choice" in Medical Physics
Dr. Xiangkun Xu's work, "Characterization of a commercial bioluminescence tomography-guided system for pre-clinical radiation research," was selected as "Editor's Choice" in Emerging Imaging and Therapy Modalities in October's issue of Medical Physics. Other BIRTLab authors include Dr. Zijian Deng and Dr. Wang.
Publication in Medical PhysicsAugust 2023
Dr. Wang at Optica Imaging Congress 2023
Dr. Wang gave an invited talk, "Bioluminescence tomography-guided system for preclinical cancer research," at Optica Imaging Congress 2023. He also chaired a session, RadIT: Imaging for Medicine.
July 2023
Dr. Xiangkun Xu recognized for abstract
Dr. Xu was recognized for his abstract "A novel fluorescence tomography-guided system for pre-clinical radiation research" and gave a presentation during the Science Council Session of the annual American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) meeting, held July 23-27 in Houston, TX. This award recognizes outstanding scientific abstracts on a topic identified by Science Council as being at the frontier of medical physics.
May 2023
New Ph.D. candidates
Graduate students Banghao Zhou and Lixiang Guo successfully passed their Ph.D.-qualifying exams and are officially Ph.D. candidates. Congratulations Banghao and Lixiang!
April 2023
Abstracts selected for oral presentation at AAPM 2023
Five abstracts from the BIRTLab team were selected for oral presentation at the 2023 American Association of Physicists in Medicine Annual Meeting. Dr. Xiangkun Xu will present “A novel fluorescence tomography-guided system for pre-clinical radiation research” in the Science Council Session: Innovation in Medical Physics. Lixiang Guo, Ph.D. student on the medical physics track, will present “An in vivo oxygen transport model for FLASH radiotherapy: the impact of physiological conditions” in the Early Career Investigator Symposium.
March 2023
Xiangkun Xu, Ph.D., promoted to research scientist
Xiangkun Xu, Ph.D., was promoted to research scientist where he will assist Dr. Wang in instructing junior members and managing lab equipment.
August 2022
Publication: Biomedical Optics Express
Z. Deng, X. Xu, I. Iordachita, H. Dehghani, B. Zhang, M. Lim, J. W. Wong, K. K.-H. Wang. “Mobile bioluminescence tomography-guided system for pre-clinical radiotherapy research.”
Read the paperMay 2022
Publication: SPIE
Drs. Ken Wang, Xiangkun Xu, and Zijian Deng, in collaboration with Dr. Hamid Dehghani from the University of Birmingham, applied a novel optical tomography algorithm to in vivo glioblastoma and pancreatic tumor models. The research shows that quantitative bioluminescence tomography (QBLT) is possible without the need for any prior knowledge of optical parameters, paving the way toward quantitative molecular imaging of exogenous and indigenous tumor functionality.
Read the paperMay 2022
Zijian Deng, Ph.D., awarded 2022 AAPM Research Seed Funding Grant
Zijian Deng, Ph.D., was one of four recipients of the 2022 AAPM Research Seed Funding Grant, for his research topic of “Ultra-sensitive single-pixel bioluminescence tomography for in vivo cell tracking."
November 2021
Bioluminescence tomography system ready for in vivo study
After a few months of work, we finally got MuriGlo ready and moved to UT Southwestern's irradiator room. We hope more groups can benefit from our technology in optical tomography-guided irradiation to advance cancer treatment development!
September 2021
Zijian Deng, Ph.D., promoted to instructor
Zijian Deng, Ph.D., was promoted to instructor. In addition to independent research, Dr. Deng will help Dr. Wang oversee group activities and support the BIRTLab team.
August 2021
Publication: International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics
X. Xu, Z. Deng, H. Dehghani, I. Iordachita, M. Lim, J. W. Wong, K. K.-H. Wang. "Quantitative Bioluminescence Tomography-guided Conformal Irradiation for Pre-clinical Radiation Research." Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2021.
Read the publicationJuly 2021
BIRTLab members contribute to new book
The chapter “Quantitative Bioluminescence Tomography for In Vivo Volumetric-Guided Radiotherapy,” contributed by BIRTLab members, was selected to be part of the book “Biomedical Engineering Technologies: Volume 2 (Methods in Molecular Biology 2394)."
See the bookMarch 2021
Dr. Xiangkun Xu awarded Spring Conference Travel Award
Dr. Xiangkun Xu was awarded the 2021 Spring Conference Travel Award by the UT Southwestern Postdoctoral Association. Congratulations Dr. Xu!
October 2020
BIRTLab moves to UT Southwestern
BIRTLab moved from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, to UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.