Publications

Please see my Google Scholar for a full list.

†: Equal Contribution    *: Corresponding Author

2026

  1. Benchmarking Vision-Language Models on Synapse Detection and Proofreading in Connectomics
    Benchmarking Vision-Language Models on Synapse Detection and Proofreading in Connectomics
    Yicong Li*, Junjie Wang, Leander Lauenburg, Ella Hugie, Alexandra Irger, Wanhua Li, Donglai Wei, and Hanspeter Pfister*
    Under Review, ICASSP, 2026
    paper
  2. Rewarding Reasoning, Not Answers: Fixing and Bounding Test-Time Reinforcement Learning on Medical QA
    Rewarding Reasoning, Not Answers: Fixing and Bounding Test-Time Reinforcement Learning on Medical QA
    Kailong Fan, Anqi Pu, Yichen Wu*, Wanhua Li, Yicong Li, Hanspeter Pfister, Huafeng Liu, Xiang Li, Quanzheng Li, and Ning Guo
    Under Review, ICLR, 2026
    paper
  3. Towards 1000-Fold Electron Microscopy Image Compression for Connectomics via VQ-VAE with Transformer Prior
    Towards 1000-Fold Electron Microscopy Image Compression for Connectomics via VQ-VAE with Transformer Prior
    Fuming Yang*, Yicong Li, Hanspeter Pfister, Jeff W. Lichtman*, and Yaron Meirovitch*
    In IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) (withdrawn due to visa issues), 2026
    paper

2025

  1. SmartEM: Machine Learning-Guided Electron Microscopy
    SmartEM: Machine Learning-Guided Electron Microscopy
    Yaron Meirovitch†,*, Ishaan Singh Chandok†, Core Francisco Park†, Pavel Potocek†, Lu Mi, Shashata Sawmya, Yicong Li, Thomas L. Athey, Vladislav Susoy, Neha Karlupia, Yuelong Wu, Daniel R. Berger, Richard Schalek, Caitlyn A. Bishop, Daniel Xenes, Hannah Martinez, Jordan Matelsky, Brock A. Wester, Hanspeter Pfister, Remco Schoenmakers, Maurice Peemen, Jeff W. Lichtman*, Aravinthan D.T. Samuel*, and Nir Shavit*
    Nature Methods, 2025
    Impact Factor: 28.3
    forbes mit news Harvard Gazette Method of the Year 2025 MarkTechPost paper
  2. Correcting Non-Uniform Milling in FIB-SEM Images with Unsupervised Cross-Plane Image-to-Image Translation
    Correcting Non-Uniform Milling in FIB-SEM Images with Unsupervised Cross-Plane Image-to-Image Translation
    Yicong Li†, Yuri Kreinin†, Lewei Zhang, Siyu Huang, Erik W. Schomburg, Dmitri B. Chklovskii, Hanspeter Pfister*, and Jingpeng Wu*
    Major Revision, Ultramicroscopy, 2025
    paper

2024

  1. WASPSYN: A Challenge for Domain Adaptive Synapse Detection in Microwasp Brain Connectomes
    WASPSYN: A Challenge for Domain Adaptive Synapse Detection in Microwasp Brain Connectomes
    Yicong Li*, Wanhua Li†, Qi Chen†, Wei Huang†, Yuda Zou†, Xin Xiao†, Kazunori Shinomiya, Pat Gunn, Nishika Gupta, Alexey Polilov, Yongchao Xu, Yueyi Zhang, Zhiwei Xiong, Hanspeter Pfister, Donglai Wei, and Jingpeng Wu*
    IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2024
    Impact Factor: 12.4
    Computer Vision News paper Website
  2. EM-Compressor: Electron Microscopy Image Compression in Connectomics with Variational Autoencoders
    EM-Compressor: Electron Microscopy Image Compression in Connectomics with Variational Autoencoders
    Yicong Li*, Core Francisco Park, Daniel Xenes, Caitlyn Bishop, Daniel R. Berger, Aravi D.T. Samuel, Brock Wester, Jeff W. Lichtman, Hanspeter Pfister, Wanhua Li, and Yaron Meirovitch*
    In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Workshop, 2024
    paper video
  3. MoRA: LoRA Guided Multi-Modal Disease Diagnosis with Missing Modality
    MoRA: LoRA Guided Multi-Modal Disease Diagnosis with Missing Modality
    Zhiyi Shi*, Junsik Kim, Wanhua Li, Yicong Li, and Hanspeter Pfister
    In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2024
    Early Acceptance
    paper
  4. Multimodal Learning for Embryo Viability Prediction in Clinical IVF
    Multimodal Learning for Embryo Viability Prediction in Clinical IVF
    Junsik Kim*, Zhiyi Shi, Davin Jeong, Johannes Knittel, Helen Y. Yang, Yonghyun Song, Wanhua Li, Yicong Li, Dalit Ben-Yosef, Daniel Needleman, and Hanspeter Pfister
    In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2024
    paper

2023

  1. X-Ray2EM: Uncertainty-Aware Cross-Modality Image Reconstruction from X-Ray to Electron Microscopy in Connectomics
    X-Ray2EM: Uncertainty-Aware Cross-Modality Image Reconstruction from X-Ray to Electron Microscopy in Connectomics
    Yicong Li*, Yaron Meirovitch, Aaron T. Kuan, Jasper S. Phelps, Alexandra Pacureanu, Wei-Chung Allen Lee, Nir Shavit, and Lu Mi*
    In IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2023
    paper video
  2. The XPRESS Challenge: Xray Projectomic Reconstruction – Extracting Segmentation with Skeletons
    The XPRESS Challenge: Xray Projectomic Reconstruction – Extracting Segmentation with Skeletons
    Tri Nguyen, Mukul Narwani, Mark Larson, Yicong Li, Shuhan Xie, Hanspeter Pfister, Donglai Wei, Nir Shavit, Lu Mi, Alexandra Pacureanu*, Wei-Chung Lee*, and Aaron T. Kuan*
    In IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) Challenge Proposal, 2023
    paper Website
  3. Efficient Prediction of Model Transferability in Semantic Segmentation Tasks
    Efficient Prediction of Model Transferability in Semantic Segmentation Tasks
    Yang Tan, Yicong Li, Yang Li*, and Xiao-Ping Zhang
    In IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2023
    paper
  4. Investigating Consistency Constraints in Heterogeneous Multi-Task Learning for Medical Image Processing
    Investigating Consistency Constraints in Heterogeneous Multi-Task Learning for Medical Image Processing
    Jingyun Yang, Yicong Li, Yang Tan, Heng Liu, and Yang Li*
    In IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM) Workshop, 2023
    paper

2022

  1. Scaling Vision Transformers to Gigapixel Images via Hierarchical Self-Supervised Learning
    Scaling Vision Transformers to Gigapixel Images via Hierarchical Self-Supervised Learning
    Richard J. Chen*, Chengkuan Chen, Yicong Li, Tiffany Y. Chen, Andrew D. Trister, Rahul G. Krishnan†, and Faisal Mahmood†,*
    In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2022
    Oral
    paper video
  2. Deep Learning for Spirometry Quality Assurance with Spirometric Indices and Curves
    Deep Learning for Spirometry Quality Assurance with Spirometric Indices and Curves
    Yimin Wang†, Yicong Li†, Wenya Chen, Changzheng Zhang, Lijuan Liang, Ruibo Huang, Jianling Liang, Dandan Tu, Yi Gao†,*, Jinping Zheng†,*, and Nanshan Zhong†,*
    Respiratory Research, 2022
    paper
  3. Finding the Most Transferable Tasks for Brain Image Segmentation
    Finding the Most Transferable Tasks for Brain Image Segmentation
    Yicong Li, Yang Tan, Jingyun Yang, Yang Li*, and Xiao-Ping Zhang
    In IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM), 2022
    paper video
  4. LiDAR Integrated IR OWC System with the Abilities of User Localization and High-Speed Data Transmission
    LiDAR Integrated IR OWC System with the Abilities of User Localization and High-Speed Data Transmission
    Zhi Li, Yicong Li, Zihan Zang, Yaqi Han, Lican Wu, Mutong Li, Qian Li, and H. Y. Fu*
    Optics Express, 2022
    paper

2021

  1. How Does Policy Stringency Affect the Spread of COVID-19 Pandemic? A Country Level Study
    How Does Policy Stringency Affect the Spread of COVID-19 Pandemic? A Country Level Study
    Yicong Li†, Calvin Chan†, Yang Li*, and Ercan Engin Kuruoglu*
    In European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), 2021
    Oral
    ercim news paper video
  2. Joint PVL Detection and Manual Ability Classification Using Semi-Supervised Multi-Task Learning
    Joint PVL Detection and Manual Ability Classification Using Semi-Supervised Multi-Task Learning
    Jingyun Yang, Jie Hu, Yicong Li, Heng Liu, and Yang Li*
    In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2021
    paper