Dr. Yao’s Biomedical Optics and Ophthalmic Imaging Laboratory is housed in the Lions of Illinois Eye Research Institute (LIERI), within the same building with UIC Retina Clinic. In collaboration with experienced ophthalmologists and vision scientists, our lab is focusing on new development of ophthalmic instrumentation and imaging technology to advance retinal study, disease diagnosis and treatment evaluation. Our current research includes ultra-wide field fundus photography, functional optical coherence tomography (OCT), super-resolution ophthalmoscopy, machine learning based retinal image analysis and AI classification of eye diseases.

Laboratory Address:
LIERI B105, B107, B109, B115, B117, L215 and L217
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
1905 West Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60612
Tel: (312)996-4848 or (312)996-6040 or (312)996-0759
Fax: (312)996-4644

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Recent Lab News Heading link

Albert
June 14th, 2024, Albert Won the Inaugural Mark Tso, MD Research Award for Outstanding Research. Congratulations!
Monday, June 17, 2024
Congratulations to Albert for winning the Spring Scholarly Symposium’s inaugural Mark Tso, MD Research Award for Outstanding Research Contributions.
Dr. Yao and our lab members Taeyoon, Mansour, Alfa, Shaiban, and Albert
May 4-9, 2024, Taeyoon, Mansour, Alfa, Shaiban, and Albert attended the 2024 ARVO Annual Conference in Seattle.
Monday, June 17, 2024
We’re thrilled to announce that Dr. Yao and our lab members Taeyoon, Mansour, Alfa, Shaiban, and Albert attended the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting from May 4 to May 9. This prestigious conference brought…
Guangying Ma
March 11, 2024-Congratulations, Dr. Guangying Ma!
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Guangying Ma successfully defended his dissertation, “Functional Optical Coherence Tomography for Intrinsic Signal Optoretinography,” on March 11th, marking a significant milestone in his academic journey. Congratulations, Dr. Ma!    
Tobi
March 8th,2024, Tobi attended the UIC Biomedical Engineering 6th Research Symposium
Friday, March 8, 2024
On March 8th, Tobi was a distinguished participant at the UIC Biomedical Engineering 6th Research Symposium, where he delivered an insightful presentation titled “Adaptive vessel tracing and segmentation in OCT enables the robust…
SPIE2024
January 27- February 1 2024, Guangying, Tobi, Shaiban, Albert, Behrouz and Mojtaba attended the 2024 SPIE Annual Meeting
Monday, February 5, 2024
January 27- February 1 2024, Guangying, Tobi, Shaiban, Albert, Behrouz and Mojtaba showcased their groundbreaking research at the 2024 SPIE Conference, a leading platform for optical engineering and photonics. Albert delivered a captivating…
Jie
January 31st, 2024, Jie Ding published her first paper. Congratulations!
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Congrats to Jie Ding for publishing her first paper titled ” Intrinsic signal optoretinography of dark adaptation abnormality due to rod photoreceptor degeneration.” Exp. Biol. Med. 249:10024. doi: 10.3389/ebm.2024.10024.[Full text]
Amit
January 8, 2024 - Welcome Amit!
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Our lab welcomes new PhD student Amit, let’s do awesome research together!  
Albert
December 1, 2023, Albert was awarded for the SPIE 2024 Travel Grant
Friday, December 1, 2023
Congratulations to Albert for being awarded a prestigious travel grant to attend the SPIE Photonics West 2024 conference!
Dr. Yao
Novermber 3, 2023, Dr. Yao was honored as Fellow Member of Optica for Outstanding Contributions
Friday, December 1, 2023
In a moment of pride, Dr. Yao has been elected as a Fellow Member of Optica by the Society’s Board of Directors. This distinguished honor is bestowed upon him for his exceptional contributions…
Mojtaba's first paper
October 6th, 2023, Mojtaba Rahimi published his first paper. Congratulations!
Monday, October 9, 2023
Congrats to Mojtaba Rahimi for publishing his first paper titled “Evaluating spatial dependency of the spectral efficiency in trans-palpebral illumination for widefield fundus photography,” Biomed. Opt. Express 14, 5629-5641 (2023).[Full text]
figure
Auguest 16th, 2023, Behrouz Ebrahimi published his first paper. Congratulations!
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Congrats to Behrouz Ebrahimi for publishing his first paper titled “Optimizing the OCTA layer fusion option for deep learning classification of diabetic retinopathy.” Biomedical Optics Express 14, no. 9 (2023): 4713-4724. [Full text]
Dr. Yao
June 13th, 2023, UIC announced the appointment of Dr. Yao to the Richard and Loan Hill Chair. Congratulations!
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
June 13th, 2023, UIC was delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Yao to the esteemed Richard and Loan Hill Chair. This prestigious appointment is a testament to Dr. Yao’s exceptional contributions to…
Mansour
June 26, 2023, Mansour's paper is among 15 Top-Downloaded Papers on Machine Learning and Image Processing from Biomedical Optics Express
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Congratulations, Dr. Mansour Abtahi! Your paper “MF-AV-Net: an open-source deep learning network with multimodal fusion options for artery-vein segmentation in OCT angiography” is among 15 top-downloaded papers on machine learning and image processing…
Dr.Yao
May 6, 2023, Dr. Yao attended the 2023 Ophthalmic Artificial Intelligence Summit
Monday, May 8, 2023
May 6, 2023, Dr. Yao gave a presentation titled “Image Data Fusion in Deep Learning OCTA Segmentation and Classification” at the 2023 Ophthalmic Artificial Intelligence Summit.[full context]  
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