Beckman researchers Paul Camacho and Yibo Zhao received trainee awards for their presentations at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2025 Annual Meeting. These awards are given to the top 5% of meeting presenters.

Camacho is the magnetic resonance imaging data scientist for Beckman’s Biomedical Imaging Center, and earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023. Zhao is a Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow who earned his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Illinois in 2024. Both develop new MRI technology for mapping the brain – an essential tool for clinicians and researchers alike.

In this Q&A, Camacho and Zhao describe their research focuses and the work leading up to their presentations.

Paul Camacho:

Introduce yourself — broadly, what do you work on?

My current research focuses on brain imaging processing methods for white matter tract reconstruction and incorporating information from multiple MRI acquisition types to improve biomarkers of brain health.

As part of my doctoral work, I built the Biomedical Imaging Center’s brain MRI processing pipelines on our now-retired internal high-performance computing cluster. In my current role, I have expanded this set of pipelines to include new methods, MRI sequences and compatibility with computing resources available to our campus community at no cost through the Illinois Computes program and the National Science Foundation's Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support.

What was your ISMRM presentation about, and what work led to this presentation?

We use an MRI method called diffusion-weighted imaging to estimate the movement of water in different directions in the brain. This allows us to map white matter — tissue in the brain which connects brain regions to each other and is made up of nerve fiber bundles called tracts — using a process called tractography. Several metrics from DWI are used to locate and characterize white matter damage, which occurs through aging, injury or neurodegenerative disorders.

Another MRI technique called magnetic resonance elastography estimates the mechanical properties of tissue, such as stiffness, through response to gentle vibration of the head. The current literature suggests that MRE captures some information about the health of brain tissues, including myelin levels in the white matter.

This ISMRM presentation shows a new method for studying the relationships between the measurements taken using both of these imaging techniques. Using tractometry, we can sample properties from both DWI and MRE along white matter tracts and characterize tract shape at the individual level. The aim of this line of research is improving biomarkers of brain white matter health and precision medicine applications.

What was the experience of attending the ISMRM meeting like?

While I have attended and presented at ISMRM virtually in past years, this was my first in-person ISMRM Annual Meeting. Attending in-person facilitated much more discussion of my work and formation of connections with other researchers in similar fields. I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss ongoing methods developments, some of which I plan to incorporate into our research computing tools at BIC.

What are your thoughts about receiving this award?

I am honored to receive this award for my first in-person presentation at the ISMRM Annual Meeting. A top 5% score on my presentation is very validating of the work that we do here at Beckman. 

Yibo Zhao:

Introduce yourself — broadly, what do you work on?

My research focus is on developing next-generation MRI technology for brain mapping. More specifically, I have been developing methods to enable ultrafast high-resolution MR spectroscopic imaging of the whole brain. Unlike conventional MRI, which is based solely on signals from water molecules for detailed visualization of brain structures, MRSI measures signals from brain metabolites and neurotransmitters — two classes of brain chemicals — as well as water signals. Therefore, it can provide insights into the molecular alterations underlying brain function and disease processes. 

What was your ISMRM presentation about, and what work led to this presentation?

My ISMRM presentation is based on our recent technical breakthrough in MRSI. In the past several years, Zhi-Pei Liang’s group at the Beckman Institute has been developing a powerful MRSI technology known as SPICE, or Spectroscopic Imaging by exploiting spatiospectral CorrElation. SPICE enables ultrafast, high-resolution, whole-brain metabolic imaging.

My presentation reports a novel approach for quantifying metabolites and neurotransmitters using SPICE, developed in collaboration with Zhi-Pei Liang and Brad Sutton’s groups. This imaging capability is important since MRI and MRSI often provide qualitative and/or relative measurements. Quantitative metabolic imaging can significantly enhance our understanding of brain metabolism in healthy and diseased conditions.

What was the experience of attending the ISMRM meeting like?

This was my fourth time attending the ISMRM meeting. The meeting attracted 6,000 attendees from around the world and gave me unique opportunities to talk with my peers and established MRI experts from academia, industry and medical centers. I enjoyed the interactions very much, which enriched my experience as a researcher and speaker.

What are your thoughts about receiving this award?

I feel honored to receive this award, which is given to presentations ranked in the top 5% of the peer review process. It’s very encouraging to see the MRI community recognize our work. This recognition motivates me to continue pushing the boundaries in metabolic imaging.

Editor’s notes:

This interview was lightly edited for print.

Camacho’s presentation, "Tractometry of shear stiffness and damping ratio using diffusion weighted imaging and magnetic resonance elastography" was made possible by expertise from BIC staff members Aaron Anderson and Brad Sutton. Data used in the project were collected in an NIH-funded study (National Institute on Aging grant number 5R03AG065894-02) led by BIC alumna Hillary Schwarb (now at University of Nebraska Lincoln).