The IOMP John Mallard Award honours a medical physicist who has developed an innovation of high scientific quality and who has successfully translated this innovation in clinical practice.
Amongst several very high calibre nominations from all over the world, the Awards and Honours Committee of the IOMP considered Prof. Habib Zaidi as an outstanding medical physicist, with impressive capacity to innovate, develop and translate to clinical setting technological advances in the field of multimodality medical imaging and its application in clinical practice. He has made valuable and seminal contributions in academia, education and mentoring and tutoring of many highly qualified medical physicists. His academic accomplishments in the area of quantitative PET imaging have been well recognized by his peers and by the medical imaging community at large since he is a recipient of many awards and distinctions. He has also been elevated to the grade of fellow of the IEEE, AIMBE, AAPM, IOMP, AAIA and the BIR.
Some main achievements:
- He developed versatile PET and CT Monte Carlo simulation packages that have been used extensively in imaging physics research.
- Zaidi is highly recognized for pioneering MRI-guided attenuation correction, carried out in 2002 prior to the advent of hybrid PET/MRI systems, demonstrating his visionary and futuristic outlook and paving the way for a new class of algorithms.
- In collaboration with some colleagues, he developed methodologies for metal artifact reduction in CT and correction of oral contrast medium for artifact-free CT and PET/CT imaging that have been applied in clinical setting.
- In collaboration with some colleagues, he developed a large number of advanced human, primate and small-animal computational models suitable for radiation dosimetry research.
- In collaboration with some colleagues, he developed innovative deep learning-powered algorithms for various multimodality medical image analysis applications, including imaging instrumentation design, image denoising (PET and CT), quantitative image reconstruction, image segmentation, artifact-free imaging, radiation dosimetry and computer-aided diagnosis, prognosis, and outcome prediction. Many of these developments have high potential for clinical translation.
- In addition to being a researcher with more than $10 million in research grants, 400 peer-reviewed publications, he supervised 29 PhD theses and mentored and trained over 22 senior scientists and postdoc fellows.
In recognition of the extraordinary definite impact that Prof. Habib Zaidi had over the entire field of medical physics, the IOMP has decided to award him the 2023 John Mallard Award.
Congratulations, Prof. Habib Zaidi.