Week 3 - First Day in the Multiple Sclerosis Center

For the past few weeks, I have been shadowing Dr. Chiang and learning how to identify pathologies in the brain using MRI and CT scans. During this time, I have seen several cases of Small Vessel Disease (SVD) in the brain, which will be helpful when I begin my summer project to use Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) a s a means of better differentiating between SVD and Multiple Sclerosis (MS). While I had previously been able to shadow a clinician and learn more about patients with SVD, I still had yet to gain a similar experience for patients with MS. That all changed this week, as I also began shadowing Dr. Susan Gauthier in the Weill Cornell Medical Center's Multiple Sclerosis Center. 

While shadowing Dr. Gauthier, I was able to meet a plethora of patients, all of whom had MS. The severity of the disease is highly dependent on the individual, and it seemed that no two patients experienced MS in exactly the same way. I particularly enjoyed watching when Dr. Gauthier would bring up a patient's old MRI scan side by side with a recent one to show the patient if/how their MS is progressing. The experience showed me a different approach to reading MRI scans than I was used to. I had previously only experienced what it is like to investigate an MRI scan while in the Neuroradiology Reading Room, where the only people looking at an MRI are trained professionals. In the Neuro Reading Room, there is a sense of scientific fascination when looking at neuroimages and a lot of medical jargon is used to describe what is being seen. With Dr. Gauthier and her patients in the clinic, looking over an MRI scan of the brain was approached in a simpler and more emotionally sensitive manner. I imagine that this is done to make the patient feel less stressed and ensure that they can understand their disease. 

Apart from shadowing Dr. Gauthier, I also learned that Dr. Chiang has identified patients with SVD whose MRIs will be used for my summer project. I am optimistic that these files will be reconstructed and made available to me by early next week so that I can begin segmenting the images and identifying the lesions in them. I was given a desk in Dr. Yi Wang's lab where I will be working for the remainder of the summer and I am excited to finally begin working on my project there soon! 

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