June 2026 – Dr. Yansong Zhu Receives First Place Young Investigator Award at SNMMI 2026
Dr. Yansong Zhu has been honored with the First Place PIDSC Young Investigator Award at the 2026 SNMMI Annual Meeting, the premier annual gathering of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging professionals worldwide. Yansong's work, "Super-resolution PET-enabled dual-energy CT imaging with application to different radiotracers," was selected as one of six finalists from a competitive pool of nearly 300 submitted abstracts and ultimately received the top distinction.
The study, conducted using UC Davis's uEXPLORER Total-Body PET/CT scanner, introduces a novel method for getting more informative images from existing PET/CT scanners, without requiring any additional hardware or extra radiation exposure to the patient. Normally, PET scans produce images that are much blurrier than CT scans, making it harder to distinguish fine tissue details. Yansong's approach derives a second gamma-ray CT image entirely from the PET scan's own data, bringing it up towards CT-level clarity, aided by advanced AI-driven reconstruction method.
Beyond sharper images, this technique also enables a richer view of tissue composition: by combining information from two different CT energy levels (the standard x-ray CT and the higher-energy PET-derived CT), clinicians can better distinguish between bone, soft tissue, and other materials in a single scan session. The team demonstrated that the method works reliably across different types of radiotracers, expanding its potential use across a wide range of clinical scenarios, from cancer imaging to body composition and bone health assessment.
Congratulations to Yansong and the entire team!
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