The Second Annual Radiology Research Symposium brought together a thriving community of radiology professionals, researchers, and trainees to encourage collaboration and foster mentorship. This honored the legacy of Dr. Howard J. Barnhard, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the UAMS Department of Radiology, whose generous endowment sponsored the event. The event was held in the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, and featured a day full of state-of-the-art presentations, a poster session, and distinguished lectures.
The day began with a warm introduction by Steven Webber, MBChB, MRCP, Executive Vice Chancellor of UAMS and Dean of the College of Medicine.
This year, Charles E. Kahn, Jr., M.D., MS, FACR, Professor and Vice Chair of Radiology of the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, provided a comprehensive lecture about the role of AI in radiology, titled “AI, Radiology Research, and Our Way Forward”.
Honoring the legacy of Eddie Angtuaco, M.D., Professor and chief of neuroradiology, a roundtable discussion was held to discuss how collaborative efforts can effectively be more impactful in our research community, and how to incorporate AI on current and future projects.
Lunch Break & Poster Session
Attendees enjoyed lunch and refreshments while exploring a wide range of poster presentations.
List of posters:
1. Exploring the Biological Differences between Conventional and SpatiallyFractionated Radiation – Presented by Amie Brint, BS.
2. The Role of Multimodality Imaging in Diagnosis of Ruptured Ectopic Pregnancy in Emergency Setting – Presented by Lawrence Brookman, M.D.
3. DICER1-Associated Ovarian Sertoli-Leydig Cell Tumor with Heterologous Rhabdomyosarcoma Elements: Aggressive Peritoneal Recurrence and Fatal Course in a Pediatric Patient – Presented by Michael Bunyard, fourth-year medical student
4. Dual-Coil Localization with Intentional Pneumothorax for Pulmonary Nodule Resection in Pediatric Patients: Technique and Initial Experience – Presented by Aditi Chaurasia, M.B.B.S.
5. Mixed Experience with AI for Critical Findings in Neuroradiology in the Reporting Room? Positives and Pitfalls – Presented by Giridhar Dasegowda, M.D.
6. Maternal Nutritional Intake During Pregnancy and White Matter Development in 8-Year-Old Offspring – Presented by Matthew Goodwin, BS.
7. First Trimester Maternal Vitamin K Intake and Offspring Cortical Development: A Neuroimaging Study – Presented by Alexander Han, medical student
8. Virtual-Eyes: Quantitative Validation of a Lung CT Quality-Control Pipeline for Foundation-Model Cancer Risk Prediction – Presented by Md Enamul Hoq, MS.
9. Chest CT Distinction of Necrotizing Pneumonia Cysts from Lung Abscess: A Pictorial Essay – Presented by Ahmed Negm, M.D.
10. BrainMetScan: A Deep Learning Ensemble for Automated Brain Metastasis Detection and Segmentation in MRI – Presented by Clark Kirby.
11. Analysis of Young Stroke Patients Who Underwent Mechanical Thrombectomy in the United States “Stroke Belt” – Presented by Alex McClanahan, M.D.
12. ARGUS: A Real-Time LED Guidance System for Radiation Shield Optimization in Interventional Radiology – Presented by Rodrigo Meade, BS.
13. QuMoE: A Quantum-Inspired Mixture-of-Experts Approach to Multimodal Neural Decoding – Presented by Hoang-Quan Nguyen, PhD candidate.
14. TIMBRE: Time-aware Multimodal Vision-Brain Encoding – Presented by Xuan Bac Nguyen, PhD.
15. Radiofrequency Ablation for Trigeminal Neuralgia: Outcomes, Complications, and Pain Relief – Presented by Luis Nunez, M.D.
16. Pacemaker Site–Associated Extranodal Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma: A Rare Complication Mimicking Device Infection – Presented by Ishan Pandey, third-year medical student.
17. Associations Between Brain White Matter Development in 8-year-old Children and Maternal Physical Activity During Pregnancy – Presented by Nada Tolba, third-year medical student.
Lunch Break/Poster Session
Oral Presentations
Oral Presentations were hosted at the Walton auditorium, each speaker had 10 minutes to present their research projects.
List of oral presentations:
1. Impact of GLP-1 Agonist Therapy on FDG Biodistribution and PET/CT Quantitative Parameters – Presented by Anna Eshghi, D.O.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Josh Eichhorn and Dr. Naghmeh Eshghi
2. Sedation Model and Procedural Efficiency in Infusaport Placement: Comparison of Ambulatory Surgery Center and Hospital Settings – Presented by Aditi Chaurasia, M.B.B.S.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Adam Berry
3. Mixed experience with AI for critical findings in neuroradiology in the reporting room? Positives and pitfalls – Presented by Giridhar Dasegowda, M.D.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Sanjaya Viswamitra
4. Transient Ossicle of the Spheno-occipital Synchondrosis: Sex-specific Timeline and Age Prediction – Presented by Marianne Nabbout, M.D.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnaiah
5. CT Findings of Necrotizing Pneumonia with Clinical Outcomes – Presented by Ahmed Negm, M.D.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles James
Awards & Reception
After a faculty committee reviewed and ranked each poster and oral presentation, the day concluded with a celebratory awards reception, recognizing the outstanding contributions of this year’s presenters.
Congratulations to Our 2026 Radiology Research Day Awardees:
Best Poster presentation:
Luis Nunez, M.D.
“Radiofrequency Ablation for Trigeminal Neuralgia: Outcomes, Complications, and Pain Relief”
Mentor: Satya Patro, M.D.
2026 Howard J. Barnhard, M.D. Radiology Resident Research Endowment Seed Grant Award
Alexander McClanahan, M.D.
“Automated Image Guidance for Endovascular Brain-Computer Interface Placement”
Mentor: Shobit Sharma, M.D.
Best Oral Presentation
Anna Eshghi, D.O.
“Impact of GLP-1 Agonist Therapy on FDG Biodistribution and PET/CT Quantitative Parameters”
Mentors: Josh Eichhorn, M.D. and Naghmeh Eshghi, M.D.
RSNA Roentgen Ray Research Award: Recognizes outstanding residents who have published in peer-reviewed journals, presented work at regional and national meetings, and contributed to the success of a departmental research program.
Aditi Chaurasia, M.B.B.S.
RSNA Resident Research Award – Aditi Chaurasia
Aditi has been a prolific and committed researcher throughout her training at UAMS and has leveraged her post-doctoral experience from the National Institutes of Health with stellar productivity in our institutional research enterprise.
She has published altogether 29 peer-reviewed papers, 4 of them in calendar year 2025.
Most recently, she has presented her work in local venues such as the Arkansas Medical Society Annual Meeting – where she won an award for best poster in 2025 – as well as on the national stage at ARRS and Southern Radiology Conference.
Within the past year, Aditi was selected for the Society of Interventional Oncology RISE Forum Scholarship and the Association for Academic Radiology Resident Academic Leadership Development (ARRALD) Program.
She is currently working on an IR outcomes study evaluating the efficiency of Infusaport placements at our institution, comparing ambulatory surgery center and hospital-based workflows – the study she presented us today.
She is also collaborating with our pediatric radiology colleagues on a study on congenital anomalies with cases including Neu-Laxova syndrome and Campomelic dysplasia.
Aditi is successfully balancing her clinical training with sustained, impactful research, and we are so proud of all her efforts!
The Department of Radiology would like to thank Sanjay Viswamitra, MBBS, DABR, Professor and Department Chair of Radiology, Xiawei Ou Ph.D., Professor and Vice Chair of Research, and Hanna Jensen, M.D., Ph,D., Associate Professor in Clinical Research, for coordinating another superb celebration of our trainee research efforts.