A Spotlight On Cancer: Characterizing The Steatohepatitic Variant of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Welcome back to my blog! Thank you for continuing to read my posts from week to week. Now we have reached the final week of my senior research project. Time flies! My work at the clinic is coming to an end. As I get ready to leave my cozy little office in the radiology lab, I can't help but reflect on my time at Mayo Clinic. It was a challenging, and at times tedious experience, but it was always fun, and that is what I like most about my project. I had the opportunity to do something that I enjoyed doing, to pursue my interests. Additionally, the food in the staff cafeteria was excellent, so that was a huge bonus. I have also learned some valuable lessons over the past ten weeks. I hope that those of you who plan to undertake a senior research project in the future can learn from my experiences. Research can be tedious. At times, progress is painfully slow, but oftentimes this is when your work is most significant and meaningful. You just need to be patient. Research is hi...

Welcome back to my blog! For the last week, I've mainly been focused on revising the work I've accomplished so far with lesion identification. After reviewing the regions of interest I isolated with the ImageJ software, I discovered a few errors, requiring me to re-analyze several scans. In total, of the twenty six patients in my original MRI sample group, I was able to successfully gather data from fewer than twenty of them, as the others were corrupted. Unfortunately, I do not think that I will be able to receive the results from the ASU Machine Learning Laboratory before the termination of my project, so I will not be able to present those findings. However, even though my work is only a small part of a much greater effort, but it is significant by itself as well. Furthermore, this experience has taught me many valuable skills and given me a deeper understanding of Radiology. As my research project comes to a conclusion, I will begin directing my efforts on my powerpoint...

Welcome back to my blog! I have decided to change the title of my blog to  A Spotlight On Cancer: Characterizing The Steatohepatitic Variant of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.  This new title is a lot more specific and accurate than my old title. Over the course of my internship, the focus of my project has deviated slightly from it's original intentions, and the change in title was long overdue. As for my project, I'm almost done identifying the lesions for all 26 patients in my sample. Now i just need to wait for my mentor, Dr. Silva, to approve my work for the next phase of the project - bioinformatics. What is bioinformatics? Basically, it is the science of interpreting complex biological data. All the work I did with identifying lesions on the patient MRI scans was only the data collection part of the project. The Image J software converts them into pixel data, which will be analyzed by a machine learning laboratory in ASU. Hopefully, this will be completed before the end o...