Tong Chen

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

The University of Texas at Arlington

Arlington, TX

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at The University of Texas at Arlington, advised by Dr. Dajiang Zhu. I expect to graduate in December 2026.

My research develops machine learning methods for neuroimaging and neurodegenerative disease — particularly Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Lewy body dementia (LBD), spanning the full continuum from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. I focus on:

Self-supervised representation learning for longitudinal brain MRI, including normative modeling of healthy aging
Disease-progression modeling — continuous staging frameworks that place patients along the cognitive impairment continuum
Interpretable, multi-cohort clinical analysis using large neuroimaging datasets (ADNI, NACC, AABC, HCP, BCP, and in-house LBD cohorts)

My work has appeared in NeuroImage, MICCAI, and IEEE ISBI, with multiple first-author papers on Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

Before UTA, I received my M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Kennesaw State University, where I worked on computer vision and deep learning with Dr. Junggab Son and Dr. Jiho Noh.

I am on the job market for faculty and postdoctoral positions starting in 2027. Feel free to reach out!

On the side, I build interactive, in-browser AI/ML projects — LLM chat, agent reasoning, a from-scratch neural network, semantic search, and more. Explore the projects →

news

Jun 01, 2026	I am on the job market for faculty and postdoctoral positions starting in 2027 — feel free to reach out!
May 25, 2026	Our paper HiLoGraph: Hierarchical-Longitudinal Brain Network Representation Learning (first author) was early accepted at MICCAI 2026!
Apr 27, 2026	I received the John Stephen Schuchman Memorial Outstanding PhD Student Scholarship Award from the CSE department at UT Arlington.
Jan 15, 2026	Our paper Gyral-Sulcal-Net was accepted at IEEE ISBI 2026 (co-first author).
Sep 23, 2025	I presented our first-author paper on unified continuous staging of AD and LBD at MICCAI 2025 in Daejeon, South Korea.

selected publications

MICCAI

HiLoGraph: Hierarchical-Longitudinal Brain Network Representation Learning

Tong Chen, Minheng Chen, Jing Zhang, Chao Cao, Li Su, Tianming Liu, and Dajiang Zhu

In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2026

Early accept (top 9%)

Bib Code

@inproceedings{chen2026hilograph,
  title = {HiLoGraph: Hierarchical-Longitudinal Brain Network Representation Learning},
  author = {Chen, Tong and Chen, Minheng and Zhang, Jing and Cao, Chao and Su, Li and Liu, Tianming and Zhu, Dajiang},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI)},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Early accept (top 9%)}
}

MICCAI

A Unified Continuous Staging Framework for Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia via Hierarchical Anatomical Features

Tong Chen, Minheng Chen, Jing Zhang, Yan Zhuang, Chao Cao, Xiaowei Yu, Yanjun Lyu, Lu Zhang, Li Su, Tianming Liu, and Dajiang Zhu

In International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2025

Early accept (top 9%)

Bib Code

@inproceedings{chen2025unified_staging,
  title = {A Unified Continuous Staging Framework for Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia via Hierarchical Anatomical Features},
  author = {Chen, Tong and Chen, Minheng and Zhang, Jing and Zhuang, Yan and Cao, Chao and Yu, Xiaowei and Lyu, Yanjun and Zhang, Lu and Su, Li and Liu, Tianming and Zhu, Dajiang},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI)},
  address = {Daejeon, South Korea},
  year = {2025},
  note = {Early accept (top 9%)}
}

ISBI

Gyral-Sulcal-Net: An Integrated Network Representation of Brain Folding Patterns

Chao Cao, Tong Chen, Nan Zhao, Minheng Chen, Michael Qu, Zeyu Zhang, Xiao Shi, Xiang Li, Tianming Liu, and Lu Zhang

In IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2026

Co-first author

Bib

@inproceedings{cao2026gyral_sulcal_net,
  title = {Gyral-Sulcal-Net: An Integrated Network Representation of Brain Folding Patterns},
  author = {Cao, Chao and Chen, Tong and Zhao, Nan and Chen, Minheng and Qu, Michael and Zhang, Zeyu and Shi, Xiao and Li, Xiang and Liu, Tianming and Zhang, Lu},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI)},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Co-first author}
}

NeuroImage

Community-level modeling of gyral folding patterns for robust and anatomically informed individualized brain mapping

Minheng Chen, Tong Chen, Yan Zhuang, Chao Cao, Jing Zhang, Tianming Liu, Lu Zhang, and Dajiang Zhu

NeuroImage, 2026

DOI Bib

@article{chen2026community_folding,
  title = {Community-level modeling of gyral folding patterns for robust and anatomically informed individualized brain mapping},
  author = {Chen, Minheng and Chen, Tong and Zhuang, Yan and Cao, Chao and Zhang, Jing and Liu, Tianming and Zhang, Lu and Zhu, Dajiang},
  journal = {NeuroImage},
  pages = {122037},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.122037},
}