Dr. Ruogu Fang and Ph.D. Student Skylar Stolte Win Pioneering Research HiPerGator Award

Dr. Ruogu Fang, associate professor and J. Crayton Pruitt Family Term Fellow, and Ph.D. student Skylar Stolte have been awarded the UF Pioneering Research HiPerGator Award for their innovative use of AI in high-fidelity whole-head segmentation of MRIs, aiming to prevent dementia.

Fang and Stolte are advancing the field of preventive dementia care using artificial intelligence (AI). Segmentation, the process of subdividing an image into key components for further analysis, is crucial in brain imaging because different brain tissues have statistical properties essential for treatment planning and disease tracking.

Dr. Fang and Stolte have developed GRACE, a tool that performs deep learning-based segmentation of 11 tissue types in whole-head Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs). Unlike previous tools, GRACE is optimized for older adults, addressing age-related issues like brain atrophy. It significantly outperforms existing tools in accuracy and speed, segmenting a whole-head MRI in about 3 seconds compared to the 3 minutes taken by the fastest available software.

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