Specially Appointed Associate Researcher

Zikang Xu

Institute of Artificial IntelligenceHefei Comprehensive National Science Center

Algorithm Fairness in Medical Image AnalysisAI-driven Analysis of Major Neurological Disorders

zikangxu@mail.ustc.edu.cnHefei, China

About

I am a Specially Appointed Associate Researcher at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, where I also serve as a postdoctoral researcher jointly supervised by Prof. Wenjie Feng (School of AI and Data Science, USTC) and Prof. Jiahong Gao (Peking University).

I received my Ph.D. in 2025 from the School of Biomedical Engineering, USTC, under the supervision of Prof. S. Kevin Zhou. Prior to that, I earned my B.Eng. and M.Eng. from SEU in 2018 and 2021, supervised by Prof. Zhongze Gu.

My research interests lie at the intersection of algorithm fairness in medical image analysis and AI-driven analysis of major neurological disorders.

News

2026.08
I was awarded the Young Scientists Fund (Category C) of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (January 2027–December 2029).
2026.05
One paper accepted by MICCAI-26 (Early Accepted, Oral).
2025.11
I am selected to join the first Young Editorial Board of EngMedicine.
2025.11
One paper accepted by AAAI-26 (Oral).
2025.10
One paper accepted by IEEE BIBM-25 (Oral).

Publications

Selected publications. # indicates equal contribution, † represents the corresponding author.

Fair & Trustworthy Medical AI

DUCX: Decomposing Unfairness in Tool-Using Chest X-ray Agents

Zikang Xu^#, Ruinan Jin^#, Xiaoxiao Li

Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) · 2026Early AcceptedOral

Paper Code

Fair ultrasound diagnosis via adversarial protected attribute aware perturbations on latent embeddings

Zikang Xu, Fenghe Tang, Quan Quan, Qingsong Yao, Qingpeng Kong, Jianrui Ding, Chunping Ning, S. Kevin Zhou

npj Digital Medicine · 2025

DOI Paper Code

Addressing Fairness Issues in Deep Learning-Based Medical Image Analysis: A Systematic Review

Zikang Xu, Jun Li, Qingsong Yao, Han Li, Mingyue Zhao, S. Kevin Zhou

npj Digital Medicine · 2024

DOI Paper Code

FairMedFM: Fairness Benchmarking for Medical Imaging Foundation Models

Ruinan Jin^#, Zikang Xu^#, Yuan Zhong^#, Qingsong Yao, Qi Dou^†, S. Kevin Zhou^†, Xiaoxiao Li^†

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) · 2024

Paper Code

FairAdaBN: Mitigating unfairness with adaptive batch normalization and its application to dermatological disease classification

Zikang Xu, Shang Zhao, Quan Quan, Qingsong Yao, S. Kevin Zhou

Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) · 2023

DOI Paper Code

Medical Multimodal Reasoning

Medatlas: Evaluating LLMs for Multi-Round, Multi-Task Medical Reasoning Across Diverse Imaging Modalities and Clinical Text

Ronghao Xu, Zhen Huang, Yangbo Wei, Xiaoqian Zhou, Zikang Xu, Ting Liu, Zihang Jiang, S. Kevin Zhou

AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) · 2026

Paper

Medical Image & Signal Analysis

FAIR-ESI: Feature Adaptive Importance Refinement for Electrophysiological Source Imaging

Linyong Zou^#, Liang Zhang^#, Xiongfei Wang^#, Jia-Hong Gao, Yi Sun, Shurong Sheng, Kuntao Xiao, Wanli Yang, Pengfei Teng, Guoming Luan, Zhao Lv, Zikang Xu^†

IEEE BIBM · 2025Oral

DOI Paper

LACOSTE: Exploiting stereo and temporal contexts for surgical instrument segmentation

Qiyuan Wang, Shang Zhao, Zikang Xu, S. Kevin Zhou

Medical Image Analysis · 2025

DOI Paper

SIX-Net: Spatial-Context Information miX-up for Electrode Landmark Detection

Xinyi Wang, Zikang Xu, Heqin Zhu, Qingsong Yao, Yiyong Sun, S. Kevin Zhou

Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) · 2024Early Accepted

DOI Paper

OFELIA: Optical Flow-based Electrode LocalIzAtion

Xinyi Wang, Zikang Xu, Qingsong Yao, Yiyong Sun, S. Kevin Zhou

Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL) · 2024

Paper

Slide-SAM: Medical SAM Meets Sliding Window

Quan Quan, Fenghe Tang, Zikang Xu, Heqin Zhu, S. Kevin Zhou

Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL) · 2024Oral

Paper Code

Computational Cytopathology

Style-Aligned Image Composition for Robust Detection of Abnormal Cells in Cytopathology

Qiuyi Qi, Xin Li, Ming Kong, Zikang Xu, Bingdi Chen, Qiang Zhu, S. Kevin Zhou

Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL) · 2025Oral

Paper Code

Experience

Education, research experience, and invited talks.

Education

University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, 2021.09 – 2025.06

Supervisor: Prof. S. Kevin Zhou

Southeast University (SEU), M.Eng. in Biological Science and Medical Engineering, 2018.09 – 2021.06

Supervisor: Prof. Zhongze Gu

Southeast University (SEU), B.Eng. in Biological Science and Medical Engineering, 2016.09 – 2018.06

Southeast University (SEU), Undergraduate, Chien-Shiung Wu College (Honors College), 2014.09 – 2016.06

Experience

Specially Appointed Associate Researcher / Postdoctoral Researcher Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center 2025.07 – Present

Jointly supervised by Prof. Wenjie Feng (USTC) and Prof. Jiahong Gao (Peking University)

Invited Talks

Benchmarking Fairness in Medical Foundation Models, IEEE International Conference on Universal Village (UV), 2024.10

Teaching

Courses I have taught or assisted with.

Medical Image Computing (BMED6208P.01)

2023 Fall

Teaching Assistant

USTC

Graduate

Medical Image Computing (BMED6208P.01)

2022 Fall

Teaching Assistant

USTC

Graduate

Services

Professional services and community involvement.

Journal Reviewer

IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging · ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare · Biomedical Signal Processing and Control · Franklin Open · ACM Computing Surveys

Conference Reviewer

AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2026) · MICCAI 2024–2026 · IEEE BHI 2026 · IEEE BIBM 2024 · IEEE ISBI 2025–2026

Awards

Honors and awards I have received.

Outstanding Graduate of Anhui Province

2025

Anhui Province

Outstanding Graduate of USTC

2025

University of Science and Technology of China

Academic First Class Scholarship

2021, 2023, 2024

USTC

Academic Second Class Scholarship

2022

USTC

Suzhou Industrial Park Scholarship

2021

Suzhou Industrial Park