Ronald M. Summers

Timeline

1. 1981–1994

   Penn, Michigan and Duke training

   He earns a BA in physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1981 and an MD and PhD in Medicine/Anatomy and Cell Biology there in 1988. He completes a radiology residency at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1989 to 1993 and an MRI fellowship at Duke University from 1993 to 1994.

2. 1994

   Joining the NIH Clinical Center

   In 1994, he joins the Radiology and Imaging Sciences Department at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he works as a tenured Senior Investigator and Staff Radiologist.

3. 2000

   A presidential early career award

   He receives the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2000, presented by Dr. Neal Lane, President Clinton's science advisor.

4. 2005

   Computer-aided virtual colonoscopy

   In 2005, he is first author of a Gastroenterology study that tests a computer-aided polyp detection program on CT virtual colonoscopy in 1,186 screening patients at three medical centers. The program's per-patient sensitivity is comparable to that of optical colonoscopy for adenomas of 8 mm or larger.

5. 2016

   Deep networks for computer-aided detection

   In February 2016, he is one of nine authors of an arXiv paper on deep convolutional neural networks for computer-aided detection. It compares CNN architectures, dataset scale and transfer learning from ImageNet on lymph node detection and interstitial lung disease classification, and reports 85% sensitivity at 3 false positives per patient for mediastinal lymph nodes.

6. 2017–2018

   Public chest X-ray and CT datasets

   In 2017, his lab releases 100,000 anonymized chest X-ray images from 30,000 patients, so that researchers can teach computers to detect and diagnose disease. In July 2018, the lab introduces DeepLesion in the Journal of Medical Imaging, a CT dataset of 32,735 lesions from 4,427 patients, with Summers as senior author. He gives the keynote at the inaugural MIDL conference in 2018.

7. 2025–2026

   MIDL chair and NIH Director's Award

   In July 2025, he co-chairs the organizing and program committees of the Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL) conference, as a general chair and a program chair. In 2026, he receives the NIH Director's Award.

8. As of October 2026

   Senior Investigator at NIH

   He is a Senior Investigator and Staff Radiologist at the NIH Clinical Center, where he directs the Imaging Biomarkers and Computer-Aided Diagnosis Laboratory. He is the former founding Chief of the NIH Clinical Image Processing Service, has co-authored over 700 articles and is a co-inventor on 17 patents.