Rate My Professor Lihong Wang

Wang's research specializes in biomedical imaging, particularly photoacoustic and thermoacoustic tomography, light-speed compressed ultrafast photography, time-reversal optics, wavefront shaping, and quantum imaging and physics. His laboratory has pioneered numerous innovations, including functional photoacoustic tomography, 3D photoacoustic microscopy, optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy, the photoacoustic Doppler effect, photoacoustic reporter gene imaging, microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography, universal photoacoustic reconstruction algorithms, time-reversed ultrasonically encoded optical focusing, and compressed ultrafast photography, the world's fastest camera capable of 10 trillion frames per second. His Monte Carlo model of photon transport in scattering media (MCML) is a standard tool used worldwide. These technologies enable multiscale, high-resolution structural, functional, metabolic, and molecular imaging in vivo, with applications in early cancer detection, surgical guidance, and brain imaging. Key publications include the textbook "Biomedical Optics: Principles and Imaging" (2007), "Photoacoustic Tomography: In Vivo Imaging from Organelles to Organs" (2012), "MCML—Monte Carlo Modeling of Light Transport in Multi-layered Tissues" (1995), and "Photoacoustic Imaging in Biomedicine" (2006). Wang has been honored with election to the National Academy of Medicine (2025), named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2020), and featured in a special issue of the Journal of Biomedical Optics (2024).