During
the fifth and sixth weeks, as well as continuing to assist in different
surgeries, we designed and started our summer project.
During
the fourth week I stopped shadowing Dr. Pua, who has been my principal mentor in
respect to surgeries. However I have
contacted various doctors and professors who work in areas that are more
similar and significant in respect to my thesis. Among those doctors I would like to mention
Dr. Chiang and Dr. Raj, both interested in the disease progression of
Alzheimer.
Once
we have discussed our interests and knowledge in the areas, we have designed
two experiments to complete during the following three weeks. With Dr. Chiang we will be analyzing MRI and
PET scan images of Alzheimer patients and determining the correlations between
diverse factors that contribute to Alzheimer.
On the other hand, with Dr. Raj we will be designing a new biochemical
diagram which will present all the proteins involved in the transportation of
AB-plaques that will then be collaborated with different mathematical model
through graph-theory algorithm.
After
realizing certain progression in both projects, I have opted to focus on the
imaging analysis project during the fifth week.
We have started by analyzing
native-space MRI scan
for each subject to define regions of interest, PET scans with
flobetapir to label the AB-plaques in our regions of interest and have used the
alterial spin labeling (ASL) in our MRI scan to measure the brain blood flow
(BBF) in our patients. In addition we have been using the ADNI data base, which
have certain extra information for every patient (inflammation biomarkers in
the CSF, educational background, APOE and APP genetic info, etc.)
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