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Research and Innovation

Hui Wang and team receive new NIH grant for development of reliable optical imaging phantom

Future potential applications for Wang’s research includes new ways to screen for glaucoma and Parkinson’s.

Dr. Thibault Bondaz (Research Associate) and Dr. Hui Wang work on machinery in a lab.
Thibault Bondaz, Ph.D. (left) works with Hui Wang, Ph.D. in Wang's research lab. Bondaz is a Research Associate on Wang's research team.
Research and Innovation

Hui Wang and team receive new NIH grant for development of reliable optical imaging phantom

Thibault Bondaz, Ph.D. (left) works with Hui Wang, Ph.D. in Wang's research lab. Bondaz is a Research Associate on Wang's research team.

Hui Wang, Ph.D., associate professor of Chemical, Paper, and Biomedical Engineering, has recently been awarded a new grant of approximately $200,000 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This grant will support Wang and his team—comprised of research associate Thibault Bondaz, Ph.D., graduate Master's student Nam Hoang, and Ph.D. student Weihao Cheng—in developing a reliable optical imaging phantom for optical imaging applications. Imaging phantoms are crucial tools for calibrating and assessing the performance of imaging devices before they are used in animal and human studies.

Dr. Thibault Bondaz, Research Associate, and Nam Hoang, a Master of Science in Computer Science graduate student, smile next to Associate Professor Hui Wang in Wang's research lab.

Left to right: Associate Professor Hui Wang, Ph.D, research associate Thibault Bondaz, Ph.D., and graduate student Nam Hoang, who is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Computer Science at CEC.


NIBIB expects Wang’s team to create a highly reliable and repeatable phantom and to share their protocols and testing results with the broader research community through the NIBIB Phantom Library. The team will establish a platform to develop and test the phantom that realistically simulates the human retina using their newly developed beam-offset optical coherence tomography. They aim to eventually deploy their imaging technologies in drugstores for screening various diseases and conditions ranging from glaucoma and Parkinson’s disease to heart attacks.

During his tenure at Miami University, Wang has secured $1.5 million in research grants from NIH and the Department of Defense (DOD) as a Principal Investigator. He has also contributed as a Co-investigator to an additional $2.3 million in research funding.