Adrian Howansky, a PhD student in biomedical engineering and medical physics, won the Robert F. Wagner All-Conference Student Paper Award at the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference held in Orlando, Florida, in February. At the conference, leading physicists, researchers and scientists present the latest in image processing, perception, registration informatics and segmentation, as well as digital pathology, tomography, computer-aided diagnosis and ultrasound.
Howansky, who was recognized for his paper, “Direct measurement of Lubberts effect in CsI:Tl scintillators using single x-ray photon imaging,” works in the lab of Wei Zhao, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at Stony Brook. Zhao’s Digital Radiological Imaging Laboratory in the Health Sciences Center is working to develop new detector technologies for medical imaging and to investigate their performance in advanced clinical applications.
Howansky’s research investigated the physics of scintillators, which are a class of materials that convert x-rays into visible light to form images in medical x-ray imaging. His experiment used ultra-high sensitivity imaging to study variations in the response of scintillators to individual x-rays. His paper marks the first direct measurement of Lubberts’ effect, which is a fundamental source of noise in all scintillating x-ray detectors. Insight provided by this work will guide development of future detectors, which will provide higher quality images for doctors while reducing radiation dose to patients.
Howansky received his undergraduate degree in physics from Rutgers University in 2013 and his MS in biomedical engineering from Stony Brook University in 2015. After completing his doctorate, he plans to pursue clinical training through a medical physics residency while continuing research in imaging physics for diagnostic and radiotherapy applications.
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