Here's a link to my final SRP presentation!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11B8cmHTxLdjUaVQ4_wT11p9DV3Bss-5hqtYo6gtyMOE/edit#slide=id.g129da60d9f_1_10

Enjoy!

Week Nine!

Hi all!

In my ninth week of my internship I decided that I would be extending my time at Mayo Clinic and doing research there outside the scope of SRP! My research questions delves into which scans are the most important in diagnosing prostate cancer and the research I will be doing outside of SRP will further explore the potential of these scans. My mentors and I will determine whether whether a shortened protocol with only these important scans is just as effective as the full length 45 minute protocol that is currently in use. Since the research I will be doing there still relates to my project, I will use any findings to support my SRP presentation.

So in the past week I did more personal research than I spent time at the clinic. My mentors assigned me to look at past articles on the effectiveness of a shortened protocol since we don’t want to be conducting research that’s already been done. As I’ve mentioned in my last blog post, the three most important scans are the T2, diffusion, and perfusion scans. Some of the articles I found compared the T2 and the diffusion with the T2 with the combined diffusion and T2 being more effective.

A phrase I saw come up often in all the reports I read was ROC curve and initially, naive me thought it was a radiology term. Coincidentally when I went to meet with Dr. Panda he gave me an article to read about Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and how they relate to medicine. ROC curves basically weigh the pros and cons of a test such as its accuracy, amount of type 1 and 2 errors, etc. and essentially determines how good of a test it actually is. For example, breast cancer occurs around 3 out of 1000 people. A breast imager looking at 1000 cases could call all of them negative without ever really seeing them and have an accuracy of 99.7%. However this isn’t a reliable way to find the quality of a test. An ROC curve uses the number of true positives and true negatives, as well as false positives and false negatives and other variables to determine the proficiency of a test. Therefore, the larger the area under the ROC curve is, the “better” a test is.

Thank you all for reading and I hope to see you next week for my final blog post!

Hi everyone!

As I said in my last post, the brightness and darkness of certain areas on the MRI scans indicates the existence of prostate cancer and this week I found out which kinds of scans and which area of the scans give the most vital information. This came pretty close to answering a major part of my research question so I was very relieved! If you recall, my research question was “When a patient can’t complete an MRI scan, can a ‘partial’ exam be used as a substitute?” And with the information I learned this week, I gathered what this ‘partial’ exam would mainly constitute of.

In a prostate protocol the three most important scans are the t2, diffusion, and perfusion. What does that mean? Good question.

I’ve mentioned t2 before and as a recap it’s an imaging technique where liquid will appear bright and any fat will appear dark. Diffusion is an imaging technique that uses the random movement of water molecules to generate contrast in MR images. It maps the diffusion process of different molecules, mainly water, in biological tissues. Since molecular diffusion reflects interactions with many obstacles such as other macromolecules, fibers and membranes, and an MRI creates scans using these molecular diffusion patterns to reveal details about tissue architecture. Perfusion MRI is based on the analysis of MRI images after the peripheral injection of a contrast agent. Perfusion itself refers to the process of a body delivering blood to a capillary bed in its capillary tissue and perfusion imaging exploits vascular abnormalities and altered flow dynamics that lead to changes in blood volume and flow.

I will explore how the appearance of the prostate in these three images indicates cancer. Until next time!

Spring break this week!