James Week 7

This is the last week that I will be here in New York City. This week I cannot do anything inside the hospital because the Joint Commission Survey is around. I have two projects that I am currently working on. The first is the database, which has now received PI input, so I have been correcting issues and reformatting. I surprisingly spent a very long time this week on the database, but it ended up to my mentor’s liking. The second project was for Dr. Frayer and it entailed a 3D reconstruction of an infant’s airway, trying to reconstruct out 5 generations. I worked in the radiology department with software for 3D rendering and was able to reconstruct the trachea and the first three generations of bronchial. Any further rendering only gave lung tissue; this is due to the CT resolution. I took many videos of how I went about doing the 3D reconstruction.

This has been an interesting neurological experience. I have seen just about everything on the neurology clinical side and have learned how the hospital system works. As for incorporating my thesis from Ithaca, I believe that this really helped focus my project on different aspects than I normally would have. For instance, I did not realize that stroke could actually be detected to the micro level and that the time is not as critical an issue as I had first thought it to be. Also, there are many stroke experts around the hospital that can diagnose without the use of any technology; I found that to be very interesting. I was able to enter into collaborations on my project and have thus far gotten useful input.

I believe the program needs to be more organized in the future with a rotation like feel. Basically, we should go through what med students go through and rotate weekly so that we can get a holistic experience. I also believe that the projects should be optional or tightly controlled, I did not get a good experience with the project and even if I was able to do what was asked, I do not believe it would have added to further my research experience.