Martin Yaffe

Dr. Martin Yaffe is a medical physicist and imaging scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and Professor of Medical Biophysics at The University of Toronto. His research over the past 40 years has focused on the earlier detection, diagnosis and characterization of cancer. His lab pioneered the development of digital mammography and contrast-enhanced mammography, now used worldwide, and in collaboration with epidemiologist, Dr. Norman Boyd and multiple other collaborators, contributed to the understanding of breast density in its dual roles as a risk factor for breast cancer and in masking its detection in mammograms. He has a strong interest in breast cancer screening and has refined and used microsimulation models to study its optimizations, the phenomenon of overdetection and the effect of COVID disruptions on breast cancer outcomes. He is a member of the leadership team of the TMIST breast tomosynthesis trial (MAC-22/ ECOG-ACRIN 1151) and serves as its Canadian Study Chair. Over his career, he has been committed to improvement of image quality in mammography. He has chaired working groups of ICRU and IAEA, focussing on mammography quality and his group has developed custom phantoms and test procedures for that purpose, and created specialized QC programs for both the DMIST and TMIST trials. He created the Biomarker Imaging Research Laboratory (BIRL) to apply imaging science to the quantitative analysis of pathologic and radiomic cancer biomarkers to improve their value for use in prognosis and prediction. He is Co-Director of the Imaging Research Program of The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He was inducted as a Member of The Order of Canada in 2015 and as Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada in 2021.

Education

• BSc (Hons), 1971, University of Manitoba, Canada
• MSc, 1973, University of Manitoba, Canada
• PhD, 1978, University of Toronto, Canada

Appointments & Affiliations

• Senior Scientist, Physical Sciences, Odette Cancer Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
• Professor, Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
• Co-Director Imaging Research Program, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research