Podgorsak receives award at SPIE Medical Imaging Conference

Alex Podgorsak at the SPIE 2019 conference in front of his poster.

Alex Podgorsak, a PhD student in biomedical engineering, won a Cum Laude Award for Best Student Poster Presentation at the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference.

by Nicole Capozziello

Published March 20, 2019 This content is archived.

Biomedical engineering faculty and students from UB made several significant contributions at this year’s SPIE Medical Imaging Conference. Notably, Alex Podgorsak, a PhD student in biomedical engineering, won a Cum Laude Award for Best Student Poster Presentation.

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“Alex is a true scientist; his research work has become his hobby and he enjoys every moment of it. He has reached a point in his doctoral research where in certain aspects he has surpassed me as his mentor. At this point, this is an academic relation where the learning happens both ways. I think this is the greatest joy a mentor can get from his doctorate student.”
Ciprian Ionita, assistant professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering

The award recognized his presentation "Use of a convolutional neural network for aneurysm identification in digital subtraction angiography.” This work uses computer-aided diagnosis tools to give neurosurgeons more information before, during, and after the treatment of brain aneurysms, ultimately improving patient outcomes. “We’re providing clinicians more information on the actual impact the aneurysm is having on the patient, and this cannot be determined with current structural imaging methods alone,” says Podgorsak.

“Alex is a true scientist; his research work has become his hobby and he enjoys every moment of it,” says Chip Ionita, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Podgorsak’s faculty mentor. “He has reached a point in his doctoral research where in certain aspects he has surpassed me as his mentor. At this point, this is an academic relation where the learning happens both ways. I think this is the greatest joy a mentor can get from his doctorate student.”

Presentations, consisting of a 20-minute talk paired with an 8 to 12 page manuscript, are a significant part of the meeting. This year, UB faculty and students gave 22 presentations, ranking UB third in presence after only Johns Hopkins University and Duke University.

Among other accomplishments, Daniel Bednarek, a professor in the Department of Radiology, was named an SPIE Fellow. Medical Physics PhD student Jonathan Troville and Biomedical Engineering PhD student Jonathan Folmsbee received Honorable Mention Awards in the poster presentation categories of Digital Pathology and Physics of Medical Imaging, respectively. Faculty also chaired five scientific sessions and one conference.

The annual conference, held by the International Society for Optics and Photonics, took place in San Diego from February 16-21. It brought together leading researchers from around the world on topics such as image processing, physics, computer-aided diagnosis, ultrasound, informatics, and radiology.

UB’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is a joint program between the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biological Sciences.