Prof. Yuesheng Xu was invited to give a lecture at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York

2016-03-01

Yuesheng Xu, Guohua Chair Professor of Sun Yat-sen University, was invited to give a one-hour lecture with the title “Fixed-Point Proximity Algorithms vs. ADMM for Non-Smooth Optimization Problems” at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City on February 19th. After the lecture, Prof. Xu and MSKCC’s researchers held a roundtable discussion.

Prof. Xu’s research team had made world's leading research results in fast image reconstruction optimization algorithms in recent years. Their Preconditioned Alternating Projection Algorithm (PAPA) based on the fixed-point framework has attracted the attention of experts in the field of medical imaging. Furthermore, this algorithm has been applied to PET and SPECT image reconstruction by the joint research team consisting of researchers from Prof. Xu’s team, researchers from MSKCC and SUNY Upstate Medical University, and made significant progress. Using their reconstruction method, doctors may reduce the radioactivity dosage for patients by 2/3 of the current clinical dosage, but still get almost the same quality of the reconstructed image. This achievement, by allowing patients to reduce the radiological hazards to 1/3 of the existing level, is of great clinical significance. During Prof. Xu’s visit in the United States, he has reached an agreement to carry out with MSKCC and SUNY-Upstate the joint application of a NIH fund for further clinical applications. Currently, two Ph.D. students of Prof. Xu are visiting MSKCC and SUNY-Upstate, carrying out the collaborative research of this project.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, located in Manhattan of New York City, is the oldest and largest private cancer center in the world. For centuries, it has been committed to patient care, research and innovation, and better understanding, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. As one of America's best cancer centers, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is one of America's 41 designated National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Centers, ranking first in the recent 2014-2015 cancer specialist selection, released by "US News and World Report".