Week 7 & 8:

            The last two weeks of the summer immersion were very research intensive. I finished modifying the pulse sequence and had it installed on a hospital scanner. I naively thought that the sequence would run without any problem, but unsurprisingly, I encountered bugs. After a few days of debugging, I got the pulse sequence running. After I confirmed that the sequence can collect data properly by scanning phantoms and volunteers, we decide to scan a few patients. The patient scans are more complicated than I expected, as I found myself bargaining with the tech (and my own morality) on how much data I can acquire and what is the quality of the data that I can acquire. On one hand, I want to acquire all the data I need at the highest quality, on the other hand, I feel bad for keeping the patient in the scanner longer.  Nevertheless, it was a good experience, and I learn to consider the patient’s condition when I write pulse sequence programs.

            The summer immersion has been a rewarding experience. Not only that I got to see some very interesting procedures that made me even more appreciating of the medical technologies, I also met many people that I will work with in the future and familiarized myself with the operating structure of the imaging centers in the hospital. Although this eight weeks program is ending soon, my summer immersion experience will continue, because I will be staying in the city. I will continue to immerse myself into this environment as I work toward my PhD degree for the next few years.