Tao Wu

TAO WU - A "WOMEN'S HEALTH" HERO

With the tragic passing of Tao Wu, PhD., we have not only lost a friend and kind person, but the World and women have lost a true hero in the fight against breast cancer.

We first met Tao in the late 1990's. Richard Moore, the Research Director in the Breast Imaging Division at the Massachusetts General Hospital, had recognized that Tao, working towards his PhD in the Walter Phillips' Crystallography Lab at Brandies University, was performing computations that could be used to support an advanced 3D mammography system that we were developing that we named "Digital Breast Tomosynthesis" (DBT).

Tao developed and patented a specialized technique called "Iterative Maximum Likelihood Reconstruction" for x-ray crystallography for which he received his PhD. from Brandeis and then, as Head of the Division, Dr. Kopans, hired Tao to join us at the MGH to develop and patent a version of his method to take multiangle, 2-dimensional mammograms and synthesize "pages" through the breast that eliminated the problem of normal tissues throughout the breast hiding early breast cancers on standard 2D mammography.

His work was so novel and important that, in 2003, Tao won the prestigious "Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Award" for his paper explaining "Tomographic mammography using a limited number of low-dose cone-beam projection images," in the journal, Medical Physics.

Tao was very practical. It took one computer several hours to process the DBT images from a single patient. To make DBT practical, we needed to combine 32 personal computers to form the DBT images. A leading computer group told us that they would solve the problem using four experts taking six months and costing fifty thousand dollars. Tao found a colleague at Northeastern, and together, in one weekend, they programmed the computers to enable them to produce the DBT "pages" in a few minutes. Tao's efforts were critical for our development of DBT and allowed us to get major grant support from the National Institutes of Health to continue the development of DBT. The result is that DBT has now replaced most 2-D mammography in the U.S. with deaths from breast cancer continuing to fall as more cancers are being found at a curable stage.

After MGH, Tao joined Hologic, the U.S. company that was moving quickly to provide DBT to the public. This allowed him to return to China which was finding that breast cancer was a huge public health problem. Tao responded to this need by starting a new company, which he named DART Imaging, with the goal of saving lives through early Cancer detection in China. With his dedication and practicality, he grew DART and led the team that persisted in developing mammography systems even through the harsh conditions caused by Covid in China. Along with all his efforts in building a company, Tao developed an internet training program with us that we called the "Dartboard". He was working on DBT systems for Chinese women when he was tragically taken from us.

There are not many who can make the claim that they made the World a better place, but Tao Wu certainly did. We will never know what additional advances Tao would have made. We are so sorry and sad and will miss you, friend.

With great appreciation for having known you and all you accomplished:

Daniel B. Kopans, M.D. : Professor of Radiology Harvard Medical School Founder – Breast Imaging Division

Richard Moore: Emeritus Head of Breast Imaging Research – Massachusetts General Hospital