1979—1983年在天津大学电力及自动化系本科学习，1984—1990年在日本国京都大学电气工程硕士和博士课程公派留学，分别获得工学硕士和博士学位。长期从事医学图像处理的科研与教学，其中1990—1993年任日本国京都高度技术研究所研究员。

Professor Yan received the BS degree in automation from Tianjin University (1983) and the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Kyoto University in Japan (1987 and 1993). Currently, he is a Professor of biomedical engineering and the Deputy Dean of the School of Communication and Information Engineering at Shanghai University. He also serves as the Director of Shanghai Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

During his PhD study at Kyoto University, Prof. Yan's research interests include medical image processing and interpretation, human interface, and medical diagnosis support systems. His Ph.D. thesis, entitled "a knowledge-based diagnosis support system for interpretation of brain CT images", is on the R&D of aknowledge-based CT image diagnosis system that can perform the majority of routine diagnostic reasoningand image interpretation in order to support radiologists' interpretation of brain CT images. The system was constructed on the workstation using Prolog, C, and X Window. The system was verified clinically by the Shimane Medical University Hospital.

After graduation from Kyoto University, Prof. Yan did research at ASTEM RI involving with the artistical graphics system (AGS) project and three-dimensional motion image analysis system (3D-MIA) project until joining the Shanghai University. The AGS project is concerned with the analysis and collection of the rules (heuristics) commonly used by the artists in their drawings, and aims to develop an automated computer drawing system. The 3D-MIA project is on the R&D of measurement and analysis system for three-dimensional motion of microorganism.

Prof. Yan's research and teaching at Shanghai University have focused on digital imaging, biomedical imaging and image analysis, computer aided diagnosis in medicine, and biomedical instrumentation. He is a patent holder, has given numerous invited talks at technical conferences, and contributed to several book chapters as well as over 30 research papers.