You Zhang

I am a physicist specializing in using medical physics for cancer imaging and treatment. I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology of UT Southwestern Medical Center.  My research mainly focuses on the development of advanced medical imaging techniques for tumor visualization, localization, and tracking to facilitate precise radiation therapy, for instance by using 4D cone-beam CT (4D-CBCT) and phase-matched digital tomosynthesis (DTS). 

I have developed machine learning techniques to incorporate patient breathing and motion patterns into 4D image reconstruction, which allows substantial imaging time and dose reduction by a factor of up to 10, which may reduce the risks of developing imaging-related secondary cancers for lung cancer patients. I specialize in using personalized biomechanical modeling to derive organ and tumor motion in low-contrast regions with pre-determined tissue morphology and elasticity, which allows significant normal tissue sparing and promotes further therapeutic dose escalation to safely and effectively treat liver cancer. I am also pursuing building motion-enabled, anthropomorphic phantoms to quickly prototype and benchmark cancer imaging and therapy techniques.  Recently, I have extended my research directions to develop dynamic and real-time CBCT and MR image reconstruction techniques by using extremely limited-sampled signals (a single X-ray projection, a surface optical image, or a few k-space spokes). With one-shot learning-based techniques including implicit neural representation, or patient-specific deep graph neural networks, accurate dynamic and real-time images can be generated to allow real-time adaptive radiotherapy to achieve the ultimate delivery accuracy.

I am in collaboration with other researchers in our field, encompassing multiple research topics including radiation therapy imaging system simulation, MRI reconstruction and analysis, adaptive radiation therapy (ART) and automatic plan optimization, treatment plan QA automation, and heavy ion-based CT imaging.

All my publications can be found in (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VzdJe_4AAAAJ&hl=en )

My research is currently funded by three NIH R01 grants as well as industrial grants, and I am actively seeking applications for postdoctoral, graduate (PhD) and visiting scholar/student positions. If you are interested in my research, please contact me via the following venue:


Contact Information:

Medical Physics and Engineering

Department of Radiation Oncology

UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX

Email: You.Zhang@utsouthwestern.edu