Congyu Liao, PhD
Assistant Professor
Radiology
School of Medicine

Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, under the mentorship of Dr. Kawin Setsompop. Prior to joining UCSF in 2025, he was an Instructor at Stanford University. His research focuses on developing advanced diffusion and quantitative MRI techniques, with applications in neurodevelopment and neurological disorders.

• Imaging joy with generalized slice dithered enhanced resolution and SWAT reconstruction: 3T high spatial-temporal resolution fMRI.
  Frontiers in neuroimaging 2025 Townsend JD, Muller AM, Naeem Z, Beckett A, Kalisetti B, Abbasi-Asl R, Liao C, Vu AT
• Fast and reliable quantitative measures of white matter development with magnetic resonance fingerprinting.
  Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) 2025 Yablonski M, Zhou Z, Cao X, Schauman S, Liao C, Setsompop K, Yeatman JD
• Deep learning initialized compressed sensing (Deli-CS) in volumetric spatio-temporal subspace reconstruction.
  Magma (New York, N.Y.) 2025 Schauman SS, Iyer SS, Sandino CM, Yurt M, Cao X, Liao C, Ruengchaijatuporn N, Chatnuntawech I, Tong E, Setsompop K
• Data- and Physics-Driven Deep Learning Based Reconstruction for Fast MRI: Fundamentals and Methodologies.
  IEEE reviews in biomedical engineering 2025 Huang J, Wu Y, Wang F, Fang Y, Nan Y, Alkan C, Abraham D, Liao C, Xu L, Gao Z, Wu W, Zhu L, Chen Z, Lally P, Bangerter N, Setsompop K, Guo Y, Rueckert D, Wang G, Yang G
• Three-dimensional high-isotropic-resolution MR fingerprinting optimized for 0.55 T.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2025 Cao X, Liao C, Zhu Z, Li Z, Bhattacharjee R, Nishmura M, Wang Z, Wang N, Zhou Z, Chen Q, Abraham D, Majumdar S, Villanueva-Meyer J, Yang Y, Setsompop K
• Pseudo partition-encoded simultaneous multislab (pPRISM) for rapid, navigator-free submillimeter diffusion MRI with reduced slab-boundary signal loss.
  Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) 2025 Chang WT, Liao C, Lee HH
• AutoSamp: Autoencoding k-Space Sampling via Variational Information Maximization for 3D MRI.
  IEEE transactions on medical imaging 2025 Alkan C, Mardani M, Liao C, Li Z, Vasanawala SS, Pauly JM
• Blip-up blip-down circular EPI (BUDA-cEPI) for distortion-free dMRI with rapid unrolled deep learning reconstruction.
  Magnetic resonance imaging 2024 Yarach U, Chatnuntawech I, Liao C, Teerapittayanon S, Iyer SS, Kim TH, Haldar J, Cho J, Bilgic B, Hu Y, Hargreaves B, Setsompop K
• Spherical echo-planar time-resolved imaging (sEPTI) for rapid 3D quantitative T2* and susceptibility imaging.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2024 Wang N, Liao C, Cao X, Nishimura M, Brackenier YWE, Yurt M, Gao M, Abraham D, Alkan C, Iyer SS, Zhou Z, Jeong H, Kerr A, Haldar JP, Setsompop K
• Highly Accelerated Three-Dimensional Free-Breathing Cardiac T2 Mapping with Modified Low-Rank Modeling of Local K-Space Neighborhoods.
  Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference 2024 Hu J, Zhou J, Liao C, Wang Y, Hao X, Qiu B
• Fast and reliable quantitative measures of white matter development with magnetic resonance fingerprinting.
  bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 2024 Yablonski M, Zhou Z, Cao X, Schauman S, Liao C, Setsompop K, Yeatman JD
• Artificial intelligence for neuro MRI acquisition: a review.
  Magma (New York, N.Y.) 2024 Yang H, Wang G, Li Z, Li H, Zheng J, Hu Y, Cao X, Liao C, Ye H, Tian Q
• High-fidelity intravoxel incoherent motion parameter mapping using locally low-rank and subspace modeling.
  NeuroImage 2024 Finkelstein AJ, Liao C, Cao X, Mani M, Schifitto G, Zhong J
• Reduced cross-scanner variability using vendor-agnostic sequences for single-shell diffusion MRI.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2024 Liu Q, Ning L, Shaik IA, Liao C, Gagoski B, Bilgic B, Grissom W, Nielsen JF, Zaitsev M, Rathi Y
• The Potential of Phase Constraints for Non-Fourier Radiofrequency-Encoded MRI.
  IEEE transactions on computational imaging 2024 Liu Y, Liao C, Setsompop K, Haldar JP
• Rapid and accurate navigators for motion and B0 tracking using QUEEN: Quantitatively enhanced parameter estimation from navigators.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2024 Brackenier Y, Wang N, Liao C, Cao X, Schauman S, Yurt M, Cordero-Grande L, Malik SJ, Kerr A, Hajnal JV, Setsompop K
• High-resolution myelin-water fraction and quantitative relaxation mapping using 3D ViSTa-MR fingerprinting.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2023 Liao C, Cao X, Iyer SS, Schauman S, Zhou Z, Yan X, Chen Q, Li Z, Wang N, Gong T, Wu Z, He H, Zhong J, Yang Y, Kerr A, Grill-Spector K, Setsompop K
• High-resolution myelin-water fraction and quantitative relaxation mapping using 3D ViSTa-MR fingerprinting.
  ArXiv 2023 Liao C, Cao X, Srinivasan Iyer S, Schauman S, Zhou Z, Yan X, Chen Q, Li Z, Wang N, Gong T, Wu Z, He H, Zhong J, Yang Y, Kerr A, Grill-Spector K, Setsompop K
• Next-generation MRI scanner designed for ultra-high-resolution human brain imaging at 7 Tesla.
  Nature methods 2023 Feinberg DA, Beckett AJS, Vu AT, Stockmann J, Huber L, Ma S, Ahn S, Setsompop K, Cao X, Park S, Liu C, Wald LL, Polimeni JR, Mareyam A, Gruber B, Stirnberg R, Liao C, Yacoub E, Davids M, Bell P, …
• DTI-MR fingerprinting for rapid high-resolution whole-brain T1 , T2 , proton density, ADC, and fractional anisotropy mapping.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2023 Cao X, Liao C, Zhou Z, Zhong Z, Li Z, Dai E, Iyer SS, Hannum AJ, Yurt M, Schauman S, Chen Q, Wang N, Wei J, Yan Y, He H, Skare S, Zhong J, Kerr A, Setsompop K
• High-fidelity mesoscale in-vivo diffusion MRI through gSlider-BUDA and circular EPI with S-LORAKS reconstruction.
  NeuroImage 2023 Liao C, Yarach U, Cao X, Iyer SS, Wang N, Kim TH, Tian Q, Bilgic B, Kerr AB, Setsompop K
• SLfRank: Shinnar-Le-Roux Pulse Design With Reduced Energy and Accurate Phase Profiles Using Rank Factorization.
  IEEE transactions on medical imaging 2023 Ong F, Zhong Z, Liao C, Lustig M, Vasanawala SS, Pauly JM
• Deep Learning Initialized Compressed Sensing (Deli-CS) in Volumetric Spatio-Temporal Subspace Reconstruction.
  bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 2023 Iyer SS, Schauman SS, Sandino CM, Yurt M, Cao X, Liao C, Ruengchaijatuporn N, Chatnuntawech I, Tong E, Setsompop K
• 3D-EPI blip-up/down acquisition (BUDA) with CAIPI and joint Hankel structured low-rank reconstruction for rapid distortion-free high-resolution T2* mapping.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2023 Chen Z, Liao C, Cao X, Poser BA, Xu Z, Lo WC, Wen M, Cho J, Tian Q, Wang Y, Feng Y, Xia L, Chen W, Liu F, Bilgic B
• Optimized three-dimensional ultrashort echo time: Magnetic resonance fingerprinting for myelin tissue fraction mapping.
  Human brain mapping 2023 Zhou Z, Li Q, Liao C, Cao X, Liang H, Chen Q, Pu R, Ye H, Tong Q, He H, Zhong J
• Detecting Silent Acute Microinfarcts in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Using Submillimeter Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Preliminary Results.
  Stroke 2022 Misquitta K, Daou M, Conklin J, Liao C, Setsompop K, Poublanc J, Shirzadi Z, MacIntosh BJ, Tomlinson G, Cohn M, Aviv RI, Silver FL, Mandell DM
• Highly accelerated EPI with wave encoding and multi-shot simultaneous multislice imaging.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2022 Cho J, Liao C, Tian Q, Zhang Z, Xu J, Lo WC, Poser BA, Stenger VA, Stockmann J, Setsompop K, Bilgic B
• Blip up-down acquisition for spin- and gradient-echo imaging (BUDA-SAGE) with self-supervised denoising enables efficient T2 , T2 *, para- and dia-magnetic susceptibility mapping.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2022 Zhang Z, Cho J, Wang L, Liao C, Shin HG, Cao X, Lee J, Xu J, Zhang T, Ye H, Setsompop K, Liu H, Bilgic B
• Optimized multi-axis spiral projection MR fingerprinting with subspace reconstruction for rapid whole-brain high-isotropic-resolution quantitative imaging.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2022 Cao X, Liao C, Iyer SS, Wang Z, Zhou Z, Dai E, Liberman G, Dong Z, Gong T, He H, Zhong J, Bilgic B, Setsompop K
• Erratum to: Rapid simultaneous acquisition of macromolecular tissue volume, susceptibility, and relaxometry maps (Magn Reson Med. 2022;87:781-790.).
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2022 Yu FF, Huang SY, Kumar A, Witzel T, Liao C, Duval T, Cohen-Adad J, Bilgic B
• Rapid simultaneous acquisition of macromolecular tissue volume, susceptibility, and relaxometry maps.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2021 Yu FF, Huang SY, Kumar A, Witzel T, Liao C, Duval T, Cohen-Adad J, Bilgic B
• Quantitative T1 and T2 mapping by magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) of the placenta before and after maternal hyperoxia.
  Placenta 2021 Stout JN, Liao C, Gagoski B, Turk EA, Feldman HA, Bibbo C, Barth WH, Shainker SA, Wald LL, Grant PE, Adalsteinsson E
• Efficient T2 mapping with blip-up/down EPI and gSlider-SMS (T2 -BUDA-gSlider).
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2021 Cao X, Wang K, Liao C, Zhang Z, Srinivasan Iyer S, Chen Z, Lo WC, Liu H, He H, Setsompop K, Zhong J, Bilgic B
• In vivo human whole-brain Connectom diffusion MRI dataset at 760 µm isotropic resolution.
  Scientific data 2021 Wang F, Dong Z, Tian Q, Liao C, Fan Q, Hoge WS, Keil B, Polimeni JR, Wald LL, Huang SY, Setsompop K
• SNR-enhanced diffusion MRI with structure-preserving low-rank denoising in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2021 Ramos-Llordén G, Vegas-Sánchez-Ferrero G, Liao C, Westin CF, Setsompop K, Rathi Y
• A multi-inversion multi-echo spin and gradient echo echo planar imaging sequence with low image distortion for rapid quantitative parameter mapping and synthetic image contrasts.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2021 Manhard MK, Stockmann J, Liao C, Park D, Han S, Fair M, van den Boomen M, Polimeni J, Bilgic B, Setsompop K
• Distortion-free, high-isotropic-resolution diffusion MRI with gSlider BUDA-EPI and multicoil dynamic B0 shimming.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2021 Liao C, Bilgic B, Tian Q, Stockmann JP, Cao X, Fan Q, Iyer SS, Wang F, Ngamsombat C, Lo WC, Manhard MK, Huang SY, Wald LL, Setsompop K
• Robust autocalibrated structured low-rank EPI ghost correction.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2020 Lobos RA, Hoge WS, Javed A, Liao C, Setsompop K, Nayak KS, Haldar JP
• Diffusion-PEPTIDE: Distortion- and blurring-free diffusion imaging with self-navigated motion-correction and relaxometry capabilities.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2020 Fair MJ, Liao C, Manhard MK, Setsompop K
• DeepDTI: High-fidelity six-direction diffusion tensor imaging using deep learning.
  NeuroImage 2020 Tian Q, Bilgic B, Fan Q, Liao C, Ngamsombat C, Hu Y, Witzel T, Setsompop K, Polimeni JR, Huang SY
• High-fidelity, accelerated whole-brain submillimeter in vivo diffusion MRI using gSlider-spherical ridgelets (gSlider-SR).
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2020 Ramos-Llordén G, Ning L, Liao C, Mukhometzianov R, Michailovich O, Setsompop K, Rathi Y
• Fast submillimeter diffusion MRI using gSlider-SMS and SNR-enhancing joint reconstruction.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2020 Haldar JP, Liu Y, Liao C, Fan Q, Setsompop K
• Accelerated spin-echo functional MRI using multisection excitation by simultaneous spin-echo interleaving (MESSI) with complex-encoded generalized slice dithered enhanced resolution (cgSlider) simultaneous multislice echo-planar imaging.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2019 Han S, Liao C, Manhard MK, Park DJ, Bilgic B, Fair MJ, Wang F, Blazejewska AI, Grissom WA, Polimeni JR, Setsompop K
• High-fidelity, high-isotropic-resolution diffusion imaging through gSlider acquisition with B1+ and T1 corrections and integrated ΔB0 /Rx shim array.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2019 Liao C, Stockmann J, Tian Q, Bilgic B, Arango NS, Manhard MK, Huang SY, Grissom WA, Wald LL, Setsompop K
• Magnetic resonance fingerprinting of temporal lobe white matter in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy.
  Annals of clinical and translational neurology 2019 Wang K, Cao X, Wu D, Liao C, Zhang J, Ji C, Zhong J, He H, Chen Y
• Ultrashort echo time magnetic resonance fingerprinting (UTE-MRF) for simultaneous quantification of long and ultrashort T2 tissues.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2019 Li Q, Cao X, Ye H, Liao C, He H, Zhong J
• Highly accelerated multishot echo planar imaging through synergistic machine learning and joint reconstruction.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2019 Bilgic B, Chatnuntawech I, Manhard MK, Tian Q, Liao C, Iyer SS, Cauley SF, Huang SY, Polimeni JR, Wald LL, Setsompop K
• Accelerated whole-brain perfusion imaging using a simultaneous multislice spin-echo and gradient-echo sequence with joint virtual coil reconstruction.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2019 Manhard MK, Bilgic B, Liao C, Han S, Witzel T, Yen YF, Setsompop K
• Phase-matched virtual coil reconstruction for highly accelerated diffusion echo-planar imaging.
  NeuroImage 2019 Liao C, Manhard MK, Bilgic B, Tian Q, Fan Q, Han S, Wang F, Park DJ, Witzel T, Zhong J, Wang H, Wald LL, Setsompop K
• Fast 3D brain MR fingerprinting based on multi-axis spiral projection trajectory.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2019 Cao X, Ye H, Liao C, Li Q, He H, Zhong J
• Optimal Experiment Design for Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting: Cramér-Rao Bound Meets Spin Dynamics.
  IEEE transactions on medical imaging 2018 Haldar JP, Griswold MA, Setsompop K, Wald LL
• Detection of Lesions in Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy by Using MR Fingerprinting.
  Radiology 2018 Liao C, Wang K, Cao X, Li Y, Wu D, Ye H, Ding Q, He H, Zhong J
• Squeezed Trajectory Design for Peak RF and Integrated RF Power Reduction in Parallel Transmission MRI.
  IEEE transactions on medical imaging 2018 Li Q, Liao C, Ye H, Chen Y, Cao X, Yuan L, He H, Zhong J
• Improving parallel imaging by jointly reconstructing multi-contrast data.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2018 Bilgic B, Kim TH, Liao C, Manhard MK, Wald LL, Haldar JP, Setsompop K
• 3D MR fingerprinting with accelerated stack-of-spirals and hybrid sliding-window and GRAPPA reconstruction.
  NeuroImage 2017 Liao C, Bilgic B, Manhard MK, Zhao B, Cao X, Zhong J, Wald LL, Setsompop K
• Robust sliding-window reconstruction for Accelerating the acquisition of MR fingerprinting.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2016 Cao X, Liao C, Wang Z, Chen Y, Ye H, He H, Zhong J
• Uncertainty assessment of gamma-aminobutyric acid concentration of different brain regions in individual and group using residual bootstrap analysis.
  Medical & biological engineering & computing 2016 Chen M, Liao C, Chen S, Ding Q, Zhu D, Liu H, Yan X, Zhong J
• Efficient parallel reconstruction for high resolution multishot spiral diffusion data with low rank constraint.
  Magnetic resonance in medicine 2016 Liao C, Chen Y, Cao X, Chen S, He H, Mani M, Jacob M, Magnotta V, Zhong J