Farzad Khalvati

AI Associate, Department of Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology

Dr. Farzad Khalvati is a Senior Scientist and Endowed Chair in Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Director of the Intelligent Medical Informatics Computing Systems (IMICS) Lab at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Imaging and Institute of Medical Science, with cross appointments to the Departments of Computer Science, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. He has authored over 110 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings with additional 65 peer-reviewed abstracts presented in scientific conferences. His research has been supported by over $3.8M in peer-reviewed funding, with over $1.5M as the Principal Investigator. He has supervised more than 70 trainees at graduate and undergraduate levels as the primary supervisor and his students have received $260K in scholarships and awards.

Research

Dr. Khalvati leads the design, development, validation, and deployment of AI tools for medicine using multi-modal data such as medical imaging and healthcare informatics. Interpretable, human-centered, and optimized AI for medicine, and AI for equitable access to healthcare are other aspects of his research program.

Experience 

• 2024–Present: Senior Scientist, Neurosciences and Mental Health Program, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2022–Present: Associate Professor (cross appointment), Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2022–Present: Associate Professor (cross appointment) Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021–Present: Associate Professor (primary appointment), Department of Medical Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021–Present: Faculty Affiliate, Vector Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2020–Present: Full Graduate Faculty Member, Institute of Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2020–Present: Endowed Chair in Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence, Department of Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021–2022: Scientist, Neurosciences & Mental Health Program, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2020-2021: Associate Scientist, Neurosciences & Mental Health Program, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2017–2020: Staff Scientist, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2014–2017: Junior Scientist, Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada

Education

• 2022: EUREKA International Certificate in Translational Medicine, EUREKA Institute, Siracusa, Italy
• 2013–2014: Postdoctoral Fellow, Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2003–2009: PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 2002–2003: M.A.Sc., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 1994–1998: B.Sc., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Achievements

• 2024: Institute of Medical Science Course Director Award, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021: Derek Harwood-Nash Annual Lecture in Neuroradiology Award, Derek Harwood-Nash Symposium, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2015: Careers in Cancer Research Development New PI Award, CIHR-Institute of Cancer Research (CIHR-ICR), Montreal, QC, Canada
• 2009–2011: Industrial Research and Development Fellowship Award, NSERC, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2009–2010: First Job Award, Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2005–2007: Postgraduate Scholarship (PGS2), NSERC, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 2005–2007: President's Graduate Scholarship, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 2005–2007: President's Graduate Engineering Scholarship, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

1. Kudus, K., Wagner, M.W., Namdar, K., Nobre, L., Bouffet, E., Tabori, U., Hawkins, C., Yeom, K.W., Ertl-Wagner, B.B., Khalvati, F. Increased confidence of radiomics facilitating pretheraputic differentiation of BRAF-altered pediatric low-grade glioma (2023) European Radiology.
2. Vafaeikia, P., Wagner, M.W., Hawkins, C., Tabori, U., Ertl-Wagner, B.B., Khalvati, F. End-to-end pediatric low-grade glioma segmentation and classification (2023) Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal.
3. Wu, Y., Namdar, K., Chen, C., Hosseinpour, S., Shroff, M., Doria, A., Khalvati, F. Automated adolescence scoliosis detection using Augmented U-Net with non-square kernels (2023) Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal.
4. Taheri-Shirazi, M., Namdar, K., Ling, K., Karmali, K., McCradden, M.D., Lee, W., Khalvati, F. Exploring potential barriers in equitable access to pediatric diagnostic imaging using machine learning (2023) Frontiers in Public Health, section Digital Public Health.
5. Motamed, S., Rogalla, P., Khalvati, F. Data augmentation using generative adversarial networks (GANs) for GAN-based detection of pneumonia and COVID-19 in chest X-Ray images (2021). Informatics in Medicine Unlocked.

See a full list of Farzad Khalvati's publications