Haichong Zhang
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men and the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States. Catching it early, and telling aggressive tumors apart from slow-growing ones, shapes how patients are treated.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
prostate cancer
PCa
photoacoustic imaging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Develop multiparametric photoacoustic imaging that simultaneously quantifies a PSMA-targeted contrast agent and blood oxygen saturation, to identify abnormal prostate tissue and gauge cancer aggressiveness.
- Build a robot-assisted transrectal ultrasound system with integrated photoacoustic sensing that can be applied in patients to detect prostate cancer and guide biopsy toward tumor-specific sites.
- Evaluate multiparametric photoacoustic imaging as a non-invasive way to monitor how prostate tumors respond to therapy, as a cancer management tool.
- Validate the imaging concept in a canine model and exploit the platform's MRI compatibility for interoperative cross-validation against MRI.
More about the research
Today's tools leave gaps: between 25% and 42% of prostate cancers are nearly invisible on ultrasound, so biopsy needles sample the gland in a fixed pattern rather than aiming at a known lesion. MRI-guided biopsy gives sharp images but is not real-time and is costly and hard to access. This project aims to build an imaging method that is accessible, uses no ionizing radiation, and can pick out aggressive disease.
Why it matters
Men being screened for or treated for prostate cancer could benefit from an affordable, real-time imaging tool that uses no ionizing radiation. It could help separate aggressive tumors from indolent ones, aim needle biopsies at actual lesions instead of sampling blindly, and track response to therapy, filling gaps left by standard ultrasound and by the limited availability of MRI.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Flemming Forsberg
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Implement multiparametric ultrasound, combining contrast-enhanced, subharmonic, dispersion and viscoelastography imaging, on a commercial 3D transrectal probe, and adapt an MRI-based fusion and registration system for it.
Mark Anastasio
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Develop multi-physics simulation tools that model light transport and sound detection to generate realistic 3D breast optoacoustic tomography (OAT) measurement data from numerical breast phantoms.
Srivalleesha Mallidi
Tufts University, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Synthesize and characterize Verosite nanodroplets — perfluorocarbon particles carrying the photosensitizer verteporfin, oxygen, and indocyanine green dye — and optimize their stability and light-triggered liquid-to-gas conversion.
The school
Worcester Polytechnic Institute: 6 labs on PI Pages, $72M a year on research, 69 research doctorates a year.
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