Week 5 - Smrithi Karthikeyan

For the Fourth of July week, I had the opportunity to focus primarily on my two research projects for the immersion term: quantification of mitral annulus calcification in both CT/QSM cardiac scans and segmentation of the ascending/descending aorta from cardiac MRI scans. For my first project, I had the chance to meet with Angela Deng, a third-year PhD student who is focused on implementing deep learning algorithms to Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) MRI images. From my meeting with her, I learned more about the calcification segmentation pipeline for MRI images. 

QSM is an advanced MRI post-processing technique that enables quantification of magnetic susceptibility in tissues. Traditional MRI magnitude images show calcium nodules and iron-rich blood as identical non-specific dark spots. In QSM, since calcium is diamagnetic, it opposes the main magnetic field from the MRI scanner and appears as a distinct, dark signal on a QSM map. Paramagnetic materials (like blood) appear bright. When looking at cardiac imaging, QSM maps allow physicians to isolate and quantify mitral annulus calcification (MAC) without exposing patients to ionizing radiation from the gold-standard CT scan (Liu et al, 2015). While looking through a few QSM maps with Angela, we quickly realized how difficult it was to see small amounts of calcification (specifically with patients with mild or moderate severity of MAC). In the upcoming week, we hope to meet with a cardiac radiologist to help segment these scans. 

As the final month of immersion begins, I have done a bit of reflecting as to what I want to achieve in my final month at Weill.  I had two major goals coming into immersion: learn how ultrasound is being used in the clinic and work on a research project. So far, I have had the privilege to learn more about cardiac ultrasound applications. In the upcoming weeks, I would like to branch out into other disciplines to get a bigger picture as to how ultrasound is being used in clinic. 

Works Cited:

Liu, C., Wei, H., Gong, N. J., Cronin, M., Dibb, R., & Decker, K. (2015). Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping: Contrast Mechanisms and Clinical Applications. Tomography (Ann Arbor, Mich.), 1(1), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.18383/j.tom.2015.00136

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