Ge Wang, Ph.D.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Ge Wang, Ph.D. — Clark & Crossan Endowed Chair Professor, director of the Biomedical Imaging Center within the Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, and this year’s winner of the Wiley Distinguished Faculty Award — and Albany Medical College’s Joshua Goldwag ’20, a medical student and previously Ge Wang’s research student at Rensselaer, have jointly published an article in Nature Machine Intelligence on the DishBrain experiment and its applications. Last October, Cortical Labs revealed that they “taught” human and mouse cells in a dish to work together to play the Pong game by providing feedback to the cells. They called it DishBrain. It was the first time that scientists stimulated biological cells in a structured/feedback-driven way.

“DishBrain inspired me a lot,” said Wang. “Artificial intelligence (AI) comes in many forms. Synthetic biology produces design-based, biological AI that enables logical operations. On the other hand, DishBrain represents feedback-driven biological AI. Its working principle is called the free energy principle, by which good behavior is re-enforced with a predictable signal from the microelectrode array while undesirable behavior is discouraged with electronic noise. In less than 10 minutes, the cells self-organized to play the Pong game successfully… Continue reading.

In a perspective article published today in Nature Machine Intelligence, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Drs. Ge Wang, Pingkun Yan, and Chang Niu presented “Medical Technology and AI (MeTAI)” in the metaverse that promises to develop new intelligent health care. This represents a multidisciplinary collaboration among academic and clinical researchers with University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Stony Brook University, industrial leaders from GE Healthcare and Canon Medical Research, and regulatory experts at the FDA and Puente Solutions.

The metaverse has been a major focus of public interest over recent years. It is often misrepresented as merely an extension of computer games and social media. In essence, the metaverse integrates physical and virtual realities, enabling humans and their avatars to live and work in such a hybrid environment supported by innovative technologies… Continue reading.

Ge’s award talk on the future of medical imaging, Nov. 4, 2022 (2022 Sigma Xi Walston Chubb Award for Innovation: “For pioneering contributions to medical imaging and major impacts on research, development, and healthcare, including his cone-beam CT method and AI-based imaging leadership.”)

Bioimaging technologies are the eyes that allow doctors to see inside the body in order to diagnose, treat, and monitor disease. Ge Wang, an endowed professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has received significant recognition for devoting his research to coupling those imaging technologies with artificial intelligence in order to improve physicians’ “vision.”

In research published today in Patterns, a team of engineers led by Wang demonstrated how a deep learning algorithm can be applied to a conventional computerized tomography (CT) scan in order to produce images that would typically require a higher level of imaging technology known as dual-energy CT… Continue reading.

Ge Wang, the Clark and Crossan Endowed Chair of biomedical engineering and director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Election to NAI fellow is the highest professional distinction given to academic inventors. It is bestowed on those who have created or facilitated inventions that have improved quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.

“Professor Wang has made exceptional contributions in the area of biomedical imaging,” said Deepak Vashishth, director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, of which the Biomedical Imaging Center is an important part. “The methods he has developed are necessary tools in vastly improving human health and eventually moving toward personalized medicine… Continue reading.

Troy, N.Y. — Originally discovered by accident, X-ray CT scans are now performed about 100 million times a year in hospitals and clinics around the world to identify problems in patients. How do these magic eyes work? Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute biomedical imaging expert Ge Wang detailed the history and mechanics of the X-ray and computed tomography (CT) scanners in a recent TED-Ed video titled “How X-rays see through your skin.”

The opportunity to embark on the project came as a result of Wang’s affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Last year, Wang was among the 401 newly selected AAAS fellows recognized for their “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” AAAS honored new fellows at its annual meeting in February 2015.

“I attended the AAAS annual meeting to get my fellow certificate,” said Wang, who serves as the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Professor of Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Biomedical Imaging Cluster at Rensselaer. “The meeting turned out to be rather wonderful, especially after I attended a session organized by TED-Ed, and participated in several very inspiring discussions during the session. TED-Ed invited ideas from the audience and expressed an interest in my suggestion of explaining biomedical imaging ideas especially on X-rays and CT. I wrote a proposal and received approval by TED- Ed to develop the video.” 

TED-Ed is a free educational website. The growing TED-Ed video library offers carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform. The platform also allows users to take any educational video, not just TED’s, and create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student. TED-Ed videos are geared toward high school/college students, and the general public.

Ge Wang is the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Chair Professor of Engineering, the director of the Biomedical Imaging Center, and a member of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rensselaer. In naming him a fellow, AAAS cited his “distinguished contributions to the field of biomedical imaging, particularly for X-ray computed tomography, optical molecular tomography, interior tomography, and multi-modality fusion.”

Wang’s innovations over the past 25 years have advanced the field of biomedical imaging, particularly computed tomography (CT), bioluminescence tomography, interior tomography, and omni-tomography for grand fusion of all relevant tomographic modalities (“all-in-one”) to acquire different datasets simultaneously (“all-at-once”) and capture multi-physics interactions (“all-of-couplings”). He wrote the pioneering papers on the first spiral cone-beam CT algorithm that enables spiral cone-beam CT imaging, which is used in almost all hospitals worldwide. More than 70 million CT scans are performed annually in the United States, with a majority in the spiral cone-beam/multi-slice mode.