Week 3

I started off my week by visiting the MRI facility on 55th street. Since Dr. Prince was away this week I had the chance to talk with his assistants at the center. Thanks to Dr. Prince I was set up with my project and the people I need to contact regarding several aspects of the project. Having access to data I was able to start some initial analysis trying to figure out what type of data I'm working with (i.e. T1, T2, T1 weighted in MRI) and how they are generated. In addition, literature review on this topic helped me to understand what kind of analysis typically is performed on this type of data and what parameters are required to be included in the final report. I'm not sure how much details of the project can be posted on this blog but this topic is related to Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI (DEC-MRI). There are some quantitative analysis as well as fitting and parameter derivation from modeling involved with this project. I was able to build some understanding and perform preliminary analysis on data. Hopefully talking with Dr. Prince after he comes back early next week will give me new directions on how to proceed on this project. There are some standard analysis that has been reported in any publication related to this topic but sounds like there is not a consensus on modeling and fitting methods in this community.

I also got a chance to go to a tumor board conference this week. These type of conferences are usually held early in the morning or late in the afternoon going through special cases within each community. The presented case in this conference was a 43-year-old female with 3 breast masses. She had excision for benign breast mass 4 years ago. Palpation and mammography results showed heterogeneous dense breast with partially obscured masses. In addition, ultrasound on these three masses showed one 4 centimeter vascular heterogeneous mass while the other two were mildly heterogeneous. Upon sonogram she was recommend for biopsy with 3 needle-cord biopsy.Two masses were identified as benign fibroepithelial lesions while the third one was described as fibroadenoma. Upon further diagnostics and histology analysis she was diagnosed with low grade adenosquamous carcinoma (LGASC). This is a rare case of  metaplastic carcinoma with triple negative (ER, PR,  HER2) and typically difficult to diagnose using imaging modalities. It usually co-exists with other type of lesions, locally aggressive and often recurrent.