Hi there, I'm Winston and this is my EXP Summer Lab Research Experience thus far:
Because we couldn't get a rabbit on Friday, I tried to get a rabbit again today. As my luck would have it, the butcher's place was not open for some reason. Fortunately, however, I was prepared. I talked to people in my lab and found another butcher's place. Although it was much farther than the first butcher's place, and much more unsanitary, it got the job done at the end of the day. I was able to get a white rabbit's head and cross-link the corneas. This fourth rabbit is going to be the last rabbit I use in my cross-linking procedure. I've collected enough data for all intents and purposes. What lies in store for me is to begin analyzing the data I collected from the all the scans I took. My PI plans to teach me how to do this tomorrow.
As expected, the data analysis phase of this research project is quite repetitive. Furthermore, we gathered quite a bit of data, so it's a large quantity of repetitiveness to chug through. Consequently, it's taking me quite a while to get through just one rabbit eye/cornea. At the rate I'm going at right now, I will probably be able to finish one whole rabbit head in two work days. Unfortunately, my PI is going away on Wednesday for some sort of conference, and won't be back until Friday of next week, my last day at the lab. In preparation for this, he taught me how to analyze the ultrasound data that we collected as well. We took 200 scans per eye for one patient, and he had expressed his hope that I would be able to get at least 200 scans done by the time he got back. So I have to finish the rabbit OCT scan analysis as well as the ultrasound analysis. I have my work cut out for me.
On Wednesday, I tried analyzing as much of the ultrasound scan data as I could, since I was less familiar with this process than the OCT scan data analysis process. This was the second to last day I would see my PI so I wanted to make sure I had everything down before he left. Luckily, the data analysis process was not too complicated, and I only ran into one problem with the data analysis software coding which my PI soon fixed.
The last two days of the week, I spent working on the rabbit OCT scan data analysis. By the end of this week, I had finished the entire first rabbit head. I also started the second rabbit head, but the amount that I had completed for the second rabbit head was practically negligible. Towards the end of the work day on Friday, one of the members of my lab asked me if I could go back to the butcher's shop on Monday to see if I could get a rabbit for one of her experiments. She said she gets queasy easily and preferred to not go herself if she could help it. It was totally fine for me and I was glad to be relied upon.
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