Week 7: New Responsibilities, New Antics

I walked into the clinic, ready to start a new week.

I take the elevator two stories underground, to the Lower Level.

I proceed to trip on a chair in my haste to make it to the lab. (Don't ask me how that's possible.)

So I got some new jobs to faff around with this week. Let's talk about some of the more interesting ones.

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Hardcore Debugging

Remember when I used OsiriX to blur out patient information on CT's and ultrasounds? OsiriX is essentially a local platform upon which one may view images, and it has a web equivalent in ResMD. ResMD has many key advantages over OsiriX, mostly stemming from its connection to the internet. I was introduced the software in more or less the following way:

Christine: "This software has more bugs than a trashcan full of rotten fruit in the Amazon, and we need you to uncover them all."

Me: "I...see."

Christine: "So basically, try to break the app. Go crazy. Do whatever you want. Just make sure you write it down."

Me: "Sweet." Breaking things. Now THERE's something I'm good at hehe

I'm pretty sure I crashed ResMD at least 10 times, and no that's not an exaggeration. I then emailed out my page-long report of errors I came across, but to spare you from reading that, I'll abridge it for you.

'mhm yeah uh this is trash please fix k thanks bye'

It didn't help that I was running it on Internet Explorer (Chrome wasn't on the desktop for whatever reason), due to which I'm sure there were some compatibility issues somewhere. But maybe that's just me.

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Liver Lottery

Another job I was tasked with was to find livers with the more quantitative information surrounding them. That probably made no sense, so let me explain.

The fields of radiology and pathology are quite interconnected. At Mayo Clinic, both departments often end up treating/diagnosing the same patient livers for different reasons. Our radiology department wanted to know how accurate our diagnoses were, so I was given access to a report database called Illuminate Insight and told to find liver reports from the pathology department that had a ton of numbers in them, so that our doctors could cross reference radiology reports to check for accuracy. Accuracy seems to be a common theme surrounding the work I do.

In any case, I learnt a lot of new medical terms, but from steatosis to Reye's syndrome, none of them boded well for the patient. :/

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So I Guess These Lecture Stories Are A Weekly Thing Now Eh?

The lecture I attended this week discussed the flaws in the RECIST form of tumor measurement, quite a similar topic to my research question, though I'm focused more on the data collected, rather than the actual measurement process.

To elaborate, imagine a pool like the one pictured below:

fancy

The RECIST method of measuring lesion volume would take the longest (or, depending upon the situation, shortest) 'line' on one side of the pool and multiply it by both an estimated depth and the longest 'line' on the other side. Quite an inaccurate way to go about things. 

What was proposed was to inject a harmless but easily scannable chemical into a lesion and let it diffuse, before using a certain software to calculate the volume, extremely accurately might I add.

At one point early in the talk, the lecturer asked us to use RECIST to measure a pool pictured on a screen, so we could compare it to the actual volume. The dimensions were 62 by 20 by 5. I thought to myself 6200 square feet, and waited. He kept prompting us to answer, but eventually gave up and said 6000 square feet.

Me: Um..."

Host: "Yes?"

Me: "6200, actually."

Host: "Ah. Right."

ikr

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Grant Granted

Remember when I said the CORE lab could be receiving a grant a few weeks back? Well, it seems there's an overwhelming chance we'll get it. Score!

Eyyyyy

See all you fantastic people next week. Ciao!