On December 7, Dr. Paul Si-Yao Liu, aninternationalexpert in image processing and deep learning at Stork Healthcare Chengdu, was invited to give an online academic lecture for the graduate students and teachers of School of Automation.

The theme of this lecture is " Differentiable programming for ultrasound image enhancement ". Dr. Liupresentedin a differentiable programming framework, a separate neural network for image enhancement is not required, and as long as the enhancement algorithm is smooth, i.e., differentiable in terms of enhancement parameters, gradient descent can be run to learn the result. In addition, by adding traditional image quality indicators to the optimization objective function, hybrid learning-based and traditional objective function-based image processing techniques are realized, which may surpass its own algorithm results and state-of-the-art methods.

Dr.Liu’s wonderful report, truth-seeking and pragmatic scientific attitude, rigorous and pragmatic academic style deeply affected the teachers and students present. The interactive atmosphere was relaxed and warm. This lecture broadened the international vision of our teachers and students, and laid a foundation for further strengthening in-depth cooperation in related fields in the future.

Dr. Paul Si-Yao Liu‘s brief CV

Paul Liu, Ph.D, is co-founder and chief engineer at Stork Healthcare Chengdu, a handheld and ultra-portable ultrasound company. Using novel retrospective beamforming, GPU accelerated processing, and AI functionalities designed by Dr. Liu, Stork delivers high image quality, matching that of ultrasound cart-machines, but at a fraction of the size and cost. Before founding Stork, he was the chief engineer at Saset Healthcare, a startup specializing in high-end ultrasound machines. With 15 years of ultrasound experience, Dr. Liu has received over 15 Chinese and international patents and published over 30 academic papers, over 10 indexed by SCI, and 3 first author in IEEE Trans. UFFC. He received his Ph.D in CS from Sichuan University, Chengdu, his M.S. in EE from University of California, Berkeley, and his bachelor in EE and mathematics from University of Washington, Seattle.

International Joint Research Center of Robots and Intelligent Systems