Bioengineering Department Head Mark Anastasio Receives IEEE EMBS Morlock Award

Bioengineering Department Head Mark Anastasio has been awarded the William J. Morlock Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), one of the most prestigious honors presented by that group. The Morlock Award is only given once every two years, and aims “... to give recognition to a qualified person with an original contribution involving important application of electronics techniques and concepts to the solution of biomedical problems.”¹ Anastasio was nominated “for outstanding contributions to image reconstruction and biomedical imaging technology” and accepted his award in Denmark at the 47th International Conference of IEEE EMBS. 

“I am honored and humbled to receive this award,” said Anastasio. “It is always gratifying to be recognized by colleagues that I respect highly.” This award recognizes the depth of Anastasio’s contributions to the medical imaging community, particularly at the intersection of artificial intelligence and imaging. He has consistently been on the cutting edge of novel imaging modalities and developing innovative ways to analyze data, improving accuracy, imaging speed, and accessibility. 

Professor Anastasio is a leading expert in the field of image reconstruction for photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT). PACT is a form of imaging that combines ultrasound with optical technology. This allows researchers to image tissue without the use of potentially harmful radiation. Anastasio pioneered methods to make PACT more accurate by mitigating physical factors associated with the data-acquisition process. This enabled researchers worldwide to produce higher-quality images.

One particular challenge associated with PACT was accounting for the speed of sound (SOS) variations within an object. Sound waves can move faster or slower through tissues with different densities, which must be accounted for to produce accurate images. By using canonical object constraints that force the reconstructed image to satisfy certain properties, Anastasio’s team was recently able to advance the state-of-the-art in sound speed-corrected PACT image reconstruction.  

Building on years of his foundational work, Anastasio and his longtime colleague Professor Lihong Wang at Caltech are pushing PACT further by developing a version that can be used for in vivo human neuroimaging. His innovative reconstruction methods, based on advanced physics, can account for how sound waves change when passing through the skull. His team recently developed a deep learning-based approach to this method that is orders of magnitude faster than older, physics-based techniques.

Anastasio has also made seminal contributions to ultrasound computed tomography (USCT). USCT is a non-invasive imaging modality that uses sound waves to generate three-dimensional images that depict the acoustic properties of tissue. This method, while promising, presents significant challenges for accurate image reconstruction. Professor Anastasio’s team advanced a new technique for USCT image reconstruction called “waveform inversion with source encoding.” His team has advanced the state of the art in 3D USCT imaging using a ring-array geometry and deployed novel reconstruction methods based on deep learning. His research group is also internationally recognized for their contributions to X-ray phase-contrast (XPC) imaging, another wave-based imaging modality. 

Beyond image reconstruction, Professor Anastasio is a trailblazer in the application of deep learning technologies to theoretical imaging science. He and his team have made major strides in developing methods for task-based assessments of imaging technologies, which have important implications for regulatory processes and clinical applications. His pioneering work in utilizing deep learning to implement optimal decision-making strategies, such as the Bayesian ideal observer, has bridged the gap between theoretical imaging science and practical imaging technology assessment.

He has also actively investigated the robustness of deep learning image restoration and reconstruction methods. For example, he and his students have demonstrated that deep networks for performing super-resolution or denoising tasks can degrade diagnostic task-relevant information while yielding favorable traditional image quality measures.  To mitigate this, he proposed the use of signal detection information in supervised learning-based image denoising. For the first time, he and his team also proposed concrete definitions for image hallucinations within the context of tomographic reconstruction problems.  His body of work on these modality agnostic topics has significantly advanced the field of biomedical imaging science.

Since 2019, Professor Anastasio has served as the Head of the Department of Bioengineering at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  In this role, he has had a large impact on his department and the discipline of bioengineering. He has been forward-thinking in terms of bioengineering education and has been successful at working across department and college boundaries to establish innovative and new educational programs. He initiated and oversaw the development of two new undergraduate majors in his department: Neural Engineering (NE) and hybrid major that combines computer science and bioengineering (CS+BioE). The NE major was developed, from scratch, to provide rigorous and focused training at the intersection of neuroscience and engineering fundamentals and is a first of its kind. The CS+BioE major, also a first of its kind, launched in Fall 2024 and was developed in collaboration with the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at Illinois Grainger Engineering to enable the next generation of bioengineers to develop and deploy state-of-the-art computational tools that are needed to advance biology and medicine.

Professor Anastasio is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE).

The Department of Bioengineering at Illinois Grainger Engineering continues to blaze new trails. This recognition by our international colleagues affirms the global impact and excellence of our department. It’s another way Bioengineering at Illinois is shaping the future.

Mark Anastasio is the Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering and Department Head of Bioengineering, with affiliate appointments at the Beckman Institute, the Cancer Center at Illinois, Carle-Illinois College of Medicine, the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

¹ Morlock Nomination Form