Mitchell Polizzi - Tackling Prostate Cancer One Grainy Image at a Time: VCU 3MT Competition

<div><div><div>5th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 18-19, 2019.<br><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" href="https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/8">https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/8</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Transcription:<br><div>If I told you that one of the methods for treating the second deadliest cancer in men used</div><div>ultrasound, the same imaging technique that produces grainy and incomplete images of children</div><div>in the womb, would you be surprised?<br><br></div><div>Well since I’m here, the answer is yes we do. One of the methods that we use to treat</div><div>prostate cancer in men uses ultrasound to get the image of the prostate. Where we use it to</div><div>guide needles that will be placed into the prostate and loaded with radiation seeds that are then</div><div>used to treat prostate cancer. Now, ultrasound does have its ups and downs, but for this</div><div>particular method it’s useful because its cheap, doesn’t add any additional radiation, you can</div><div>clearly see the needles as they’re placed in the prostate, and it occurs in real-time.</div><div>In my mind the biggest gap though with ultrasound use, not just in radiation oncology,</div><div>but other departments as well is the fact that there are so many different techniques that are</div><div>available, but we don’t use them. The one I spoke about at the beginning that most people are</div><div>familiar with, is the B-mode grayscale, but there are tons of other ones that are under utilized</div><div>across the board and that’s where my research comes in.</div><div><br>The first equation that we’ll see at the top here, is showing multi-frequency imaging that</div><div>is added together. Now the basic principle of ultrasound is the fact that we are propagating</div><div>sound waves into the body and depending on the material that it interacts with will either get</div><div>transmitted or reflected back. The ultrasound images are ultimately a collection of these echoes.</div><div>Now by changing the sound frequency we are going to change how we get these images. So for</div><div>higher frequencies, we’re going to get better image quality, but it won’t penetrate as deeply into</div><div>the body. And for lower frequencies we will be able to penetrate more deeply, but get a little bit</div><div>less image quality. So my hope is that we’ll be able to combine these into an overall better</div><div>image quality.</div><div><br>The second equation that we see here includes color doppler. This one is more</div><div>commonly used as it assesses blood flow in the body. Our hope is that we’re be able to use this</div><div>actually localize the tumor location and this is by the fact that tumor blood vessels are more</div><div>densely spaced than normal tissue, so we can use it to visualize where the tumor is and more</div><div>effectively treat the tumor and focus our treatments to that area and spare the normal tissue</div><div>around it.<br><br></div><div>Now these images are still noisy and grainy, but this is just a proof of concept to show</div><div>that we are indeed adding value by combining these images together. And it is our hope that</div><div>these messy images that aren’t always clear, but they bring so much joy to new parents will also</div><div>bring joy to our cancer patients and have them have a successful treatment.</div><div><br>Thank you so much.</div></div></div></div>