Weeks 7 and 8

Over the past two weeks I spent most of the time on my project. Making progress on the quantitative analysis part of the project that I’m in charge of. Interestingly, as you spend more time on projects and go deeper into the analysis you'll find it more challenging and the extent of the study increases as you find more results. Another thing to keep in mind is to eliminate inconsistencies in recorded cases arising for different reasons from imaging protocols, motion artifacts, image quality, scanner variability in each scan and etc. This can produce error and decrease confidence level in final results. I also spent good amount of time to perform preliminary analysis through anonymized patient’s diagnostics images with the help of my mentor and his assistants. Since I don’t have access to any database after I go back to Ithaca, it is important for me to collect as many cases as I can to process/analyze them later.  

Overall this was a great experience and an important stage in my life. It is my first time dealing with real world problems. Seeing patients, going through diagnostic images, and see how physicians make decisions based on knowledge and experience they have gained over the years and diagnostics provided by imaging modalities and other tests. Some  of the cases are patients with disease in advanced stages and patient’s life is in the hands of physicians. Interpretation/misinterpretation of the tests and results can either grantee the patient a few more months of survival or shorten and exacerbate his conditions.

One lesson learned from my immersion exposure was that although biomedical engineering is intertwined to medicine and engineers are there to build tools and devices that doctors need to improve diagnosis and decrease errors at different stages of treatment, still sounds like there is a disconnect between these two communities. Each community has its own expertise but when it comes to the point that how much knowledge and information they have from each other, there seems a huge gap. If filled, pace of technological advances in biomedical devices could increase because doctors will know what technologies are available in the market and engineers would have more information on what doctors need. Another important lesson was that the most successful people in this field are the ones who develop expertise in both sides. For instance, a radiologist/physician who knows all the technical details of the MR scanners and how they work can distinguish between an abnormality in patient's diagnostic image vs. any artifact or imperfection resulted from the system and not the patient.      

 I’m grateful to Cornell BME department and everyone involved to provide funding, housing, transportation, and making all the arrangements to make this summer memorable and valuable for future planning. I specially would like to thank my mentor Dr. Martin Prince whom I had the chance to serve for a few weeks, although short I got a chance to learn a lot.