Yihua Zhu grew up in Beijing, China. He came to the United States in 2012 and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from USC
He later graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in medical physics, where his research primarily focused on biomedical imaging. He worked as a student researcher under the guidance of Dr. Timothy Zhu to investigate the application of Cherenkov Imaging for radiotherapy. After he graduated from Penn in 2018, he discovered a passion in optical dentistry as he started to work on his PhD in Dr. Daniel Fried’s group at UCSF Dental Center.
He’s currently investigating the application of short-wave infrared (SWIR) in dental caries detection, and he created the first dual-wavelength SWIR intraoral camera that could detect early demineralization and featured in multiple NIH funded clinical studies. His research also involves monitoring the activity of dental lesion with optical coherence tomography (OCT) which can detect the presence of remineralized surface layer on top of caries. In addition to dentistry, he also worked on other optical imaging projects such as diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) for photodynamic therapy (PDT) and the application of machine learning in fluorescence-guided intraoperative therapy. He will graduate in May 2024 and continue his journey as a scientist to create more innovations in biomedical imaging.
