"My name is Katelin Yarde and I’m in my final year of a Bachelors of Engineering (Honours)/Science, majoring in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering, and Biomedical Science respectively.
I am currently undertaking a year-long Honours project at the CAI, looking at “Whole brain myelin mapping and fibre orientation assessment using MRI”. My supervisor is Professor Markus Barth (Barth research group) and I work under Dr Steffen Bollmann who has been helping me through the project.
My honours year has entailed analysing Diffusion Weighted Images to obtain WM fibre orientations throughout the brain, and visualisation of many key central nervous tracts such as the corpus callosum and cortico-spinal tracts. Specifically, I have been using the MRtrix software, which has allowed me to process the images, removing noise and other image artefacts, and then running commands. These have allowed me to eventually infer the diffusion directions of water within the brain, which we can discern the WM tract orientations from.
I am now in the process of writing a pipeline that allows MRI analysis to be conducted on image data from multiple subjects, with lots of changing function parameters, to see how these can affect the image output at the end. How we can manipulate MRI image analysis by these methods could be useful in the clinical scenario, and determining if one pipeline is more advantageous for looking for a certain clinical outcome, like detection of a tumour or brain lesion.
Due to COVID-19, my honours year has been mostly online, however, this has been manageable with the help of a remote desktop connection on my laptop to all of the necessary programs I need to run analysis on MRI images and to visualise the outputs at the end. I have regular meetings with Dr Bollmann and Professor Barth to keep up to date with my progress and for them to offer advice during each step of the way.
This year I have learnt a lot about Magnetic Resonance Imaging. I came into the project knowing a small amount about the basic principles of MRI, but that’s all. I have learnt about all of the ‘behind the scenes’ things that are done between acquiring the image, to processing it and then seeing the results on a screen.
The highlights of doing an honours program at CAI are that I have been exposed to what medical research looks like, and have really gained an insight into utilising computer analysis tools to better inform clinicians about patient data. I have a strong desire to work in the medical field in the future, and this honours year has definitely provided me with insight into study areas I may want to pursue in the future.I would definitely recommend completing honours at the CAI as it exposes you to areas of medical research that you would otherwise not have access to. You are not just one of the many students in a lab, working under the supervision of a researcher who dictates your project, you are actually the one making the decisions on what you’d like to do, and how you’d like to do it.
It marries scientific research with computer analysis tools to better inform clinical practice in the future. The CAI not only gives you the option to look at the practical side of Magnetic Resonance imaging but also how these images then translate to the clinical field for disease diagnosis or injury monitoring.
Despite feeling like I was thrown in the deep end at the start, this experience has allowed me to learn so much more than the regular scope of a University subject. And both Professor Barth and Dr Bollmann have given me an extensive amount of support throughout the journey.
The best part of my experience was definitely the exposure in general, and the mentorship Professor Barth and Dr Bollmann have provided me is invaluable.
The staff have so much experience in such diverse fields, and learning from them is a really exciting process. I strongly encourage you all to think about pursuing an honours year at the CAI."
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