Biosketch

Ronald M. Summers received the BA degree in physics and the MD and PhD degrees in Medicine/Anatomy & Cell Biology from the University of Pennsylvania.  He completed a medical internship at the Presbyterian-University of Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA, a radiology residency at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and an MRI fellowship at Duke University, Durham, NC.  In 1994, he joined the Diagnostic Radiology Department at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD where he is now a tenured Senior Investigator and Staff Radiologist.  He is currently Chief of the Clinical Image Processing Service and directs the Virtual Endoscopy and Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) Laboratory.  In 2000, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, presented by Dr. Neal Lane, President Clinton’s science advisor.  His research interests include virtual colonoscopy, CAD and development of large radiologic image databases.  His clinical areas of specialty are thoracic and gastrointestinal radiology and body cross-sectional imaging.  He is a member of the program committee of the Biomedical Applications and Computer-aided Diagnosis sections of the annual SPIE Medical Imaging conference. He has co-authored over 140 journal, review and conference proceedings articles. 

Selected Publications

Editorials and Review Articles 

Summers RM. Roadmaps for Advancement of Radiologic Computer-Aided Detection in the Twenty-First Century. Radiology 229:11-13 (2003). 

Frentz SM, Summers RM. Current Status of CT Colonography. Academic Radiology 13:1517-1531 (2006). 

O’Connor SD, Summers RM. Revisiting Oral Barium Sulfate Contrast Agents. Academic Radiology 14:72-80 (2007). 

Journal Articles 

Finkelstein SE, Schrump DS, Nguyen DM, Hewitt SM, Kunst TF, Summers RM. Comparative evaluation of super-high resolution computed tomography and virtual bronchoscopy for the detection of tracheobronchial malignancies. Chest 124(5):1834-1840 (2003). See movies at http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/124/5/1834/DC1 [disclaimer]. 

Summers RM, Yao J, Pickhardt PJ, Franaszek M, Bitter I, Brickman D, Krishna V, Choi JR. Computed tomographic virtual colonoscopy computer-aided polyp detection in a screening population. Gastroenterology 129: 1832-1844 (2005). [Article highlighted in an accompanying editorial: Bond JH. Progress in refining virtual colonoscopy for colorectal cancer screening. Gastroenterology 129: 2103-2106 (2005).] 

O’Connor SD, Yao J, Summers RM. Lytic Metastases in Thoracolumbar Spine: Computer Aided Detection at CT -- Preliminary Study. Radiology 242(3): 811-816 + supplemental material (2007). Images featured on the cover of the journal. 

Huang A, Roy D, Summers RM, Franaszek M, Petrick N, Choi JR, Pickhardt PJ. Teniae Coli-Based Circumferential Localization System for CT Colonography: Feasibility Study. Radiology 243(2):551-560 (2007).  See online movies at:  http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/full/243/2/551/DC1 [disclaimer]. 

Petrick N, Haider M, Summers RM, Yeshwant SC, Brown L, Iuliano EM, Louie A, Choi JR, Pickhardt PJ. CT Colonography with Computer-Aided Detection as a Second Reader: Observer Performance Study. Radiology 246(1):148-156 (2008). 

Wang S, Yao J, Summers RM. Improved classifier for computer-aided polyp detection in CT Colonography by nonlinear dimensionality reduction. Med Phys 35(4):1377-1386 (2008). 

Summers RM, Handwerker LR, Pickhardt PJ, Van Uitert RL, Deshpande KK, Yeshwant S, Yao J, Franaszek M. Performance of a Previously Validated CT Colonography CAD System in a New Patient Population. AJR 191:168-174 (2008). 

Li J, Van Uitert R, Yao J, Petrick N, Franaszek M, Huang A, Summers RM. Wavelet Method for CT Colonography Computer-aided Polyp Detection. Medical Physics 35(8):3527-3538 (2008). 

Van Uitert RL, Summers RM, White JM, Deshpande KK, Choi JR, Pickhardt PJ. Temporal and Multi-Institutional Quality Assessment of CT Colonography. AJR 191:1503-1508 (2008). 

Summers RM, Frentz S, Liu J, Yao J, Brown L, Louie A, Barlow DS, Jensen DW,

Dwyer AJ, Pickhardt PJ, Petrick N. Conspicuity of Colorectal Polyps at CT Colonography: Visual Assessment, CAD Performance, and the Important Role of Polyp Height. Academic Radiology in press.