The highlight of Monday of this past week was that we were joined by another summer student. Similar to my situation, she is working at Dr. Silverman's lab for several weeks during the summer. The main difference is that she just finished her freshman year in college.
I continued to work on analyzing the OCT slit scans in order to finish my first patient. I also had lunch today with my PI again at a Chinese restaurant nearby. It was a good opportunity to get to know each other better outside of the lab work environment.
On Tuesday, the doctors at my lab had some sort of a conference or lecture they all had to attend, so we were told not to come in to the lab thatt day.
On Wednesday, I analyzed more OCT slit scans. By the end of the day, I had finished my second patient. I now, with the completion of this second patient, had finished analyzing OCT scans of eyes that were normal and were not diagnosed with keratoconus, a conical bulging of the cornea. This is significant due to the fact that I can now compare the OCT scans and the profile plot data (obtained through the analytic process that I was conducting) of normal eyes and eyes with keratoconus. The analyses I had conducted, as well as this comparison between eyes without keratoconus and eyes with keratoconus, are going to be briefly included in a grant proposal that my PI and another doctor in the lab are currently composing. I was glad that I could help out with such an important aspect of a researcher's job, especially since grants are the primary source of income for a lab.
Thurs:
On Thursday, I began to create the Microsoft Excel charts that displayed the data from the OCT slit scans and the profile plots I made. These charts are the ones that will be included in my PI's grant proposal. I made sure to include data from a normal eye as well as an eye with keratoconus in order to be able to compare the data.
One of the other doctors in my lab did more work with rabbits today as well. She was working on a new process that allowed corneal cross-linking with riboflavins without having to scrape off the outermost layer of the cornea, the epithelium. Cross-linking is to compress the cornea to reduce any warping. The usual process with this procedure, with humans as well as rabbits, is to gently scrape off the epithelium and then use the riboflavin drops to set up the cross-linking process. After the riboflavins have enough time to soak into the cornea, you would then expose the entire eye to UV in order to actually initiate the compression that comes with cross-linking. The process that the doctor was working was using microbubbles to slip past the epithelium. Then these tiny bubbles would pop, expanding the tissue, making the epithelium much more permeable.
Fri:
On the last day of my second week, I begun by continuing my work on the excel charts. At about an hour and a half into the day, the other summer student and I began to clean off some ex vivo pig eyes that we had received that very morning using surgical tools such as tweezers, surgical scissors, and a syringe to inject the slightly deflated eyeball with saline. These eyes were then stored in small plastic jars with gauze pads soaked in saline to prevent them from drying out. Later, three of these pig eyes were used to teach me and walk me through the process of taking an OCT scan and an ultrasound scan. But before being able to take either type of scan, we had to come up with a way to keep the eyeball steady during the actual scanning procedure so that the scans could be as accurate as possible. We eventually came up with a rather rudimentary structure to keep the eye still and in place.
Once that was completed, we moved on to taking an OCT slit scan of the pig cornea. Because the pig eye is considerably thicker than the human's eye, only a picture could be taken. In other words, the machine that we used to take the OCT scan could not run any analytic programs on the picture since the cornea was simply too thick.
After that, we moved on to taking ultrasound scans of the cornea. With the first pig cornea, my PI did the entire process, while talking to me and showing me how to do the ultrasound scan. After him, I attempted to take an ultrasound scan on my own. Although I was much slower than he was, I eventually made it through the scanning procedure and took 3 individual scans of the cornea.
Additionally, today we had a pretty unique lunch. The entire lab went out together and two other doctors from a different lab even joined us.
This is what the setup for the ultrasound probe looks like. The ultrasound transducer is connected to the vertical blue rod coming out of the plastic tub filled with saline. The big knob at the base of the platform is used to control the height of said platform in order to match the specimen that you're scanning to the focal length of the ultrasound transducer.
This is the entire setup for the ultrasound probe. Above the probe and computer screen lies various other machines used to adjust the frequency, strength, and attenuation of the ultrasound waves. The machine with the many different colored buttons in the top left hand corner sends electrical pulses through the cable that connects the machine and the ultrasound transducer. This is what actually produces the ultrasound waves.
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