The next app for physician's iPhones...

Science News - Far From a Lab? Turn a Cell-Phone Into a Microscope
Recent developments in bioengineering imaging techniques have reached new heights with the finalization of "Microskia", the first company to sell cell-phones turned microscopes.

Microscopes are essential tools for the diagnosis of diseases through the visualization of blood and other cells. however, they present numerous disadvantages such as size and cost. These problems are especially grave for doctors trying to treat diseases in situations with limited resources. However, with about 10$ worth of off-the-shelf components, Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, has converted everyday mobile phones into microscopes.

One of the prototypes uses a phone's camera sensor to detect a slide's content and send the information it collects (the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infectio, etc.) to a health center wirelessly.

The reason why this invention is so small is that there are no longer any lenses - the largest and central element in microscopes - thanks to the possiblity of using electronic magnification. To do this, LEDs added to the phone shine their light on a sample, which hits the cells and scatters them off while interfering with other light waves. "“When the waves interfere, they create a pattern called a hologram.” The detector in the camera records that hologram or interference pattern as a series of pixels". This could potentially for a quick way to process samples, since it would no longer be necessary to scan them mechanically. “Instead you capture holograms of all the cells on the slide digitally at the same time, so that it’s possible, for example, to see immediately the pathogens among a vast population of healthy cells".

I think this is a really interesting article and (although I had previously blogged about this device), I'm really excited to see what the development of this technology is going to be, and how it will affect the field of imaging in bioengineering. The entire article can be found here.

BE research paper

Now I know how MRI works!
Today, I finished my bioengineering paper (yay!), and handed it in at recitation. I was really nervous about writing it, especially since it was my first college essay, the first time I did research in the field and the first time I wrote a real paper in English. I was happy with the final results, except for the eventful delivery of the assignment (when I slipped and half the pages flew away, so I had to run and reprint it, haha) and now I feel like I understand how hard it really is to write a good essay.


First of all, it was very hard for me to find reliable sources, since - for the level of complication the paper required - there were few good, official websites and books that were clear and understandable. However, there were plenty of information sources for more complex and less deep understanding, so it was a challenge to find a midpoint between both. I relied mostly on online resources, because most of the books I found were too complex for me to actually understand them without an extensive training in the imaging field or very outdated.


When I actually started writing the paper, by first writing a draft, I realized how little I knew about MRIs, and how complicated the topic was. I then proceeded to review all the sources I had used for the diagram and started from the most basic level up. Most of the sources I used agreed on the same points, so that was a problem I had anticipated that I didn't have to worry about. However, most of them used technical language and concepts that I had to research thoroughly to be able to explain them in simpler terms and my own words on the paper. Another conflict that I ran into while writing the paper was precisely this: trying to explain things so that they would be as clear as possible.


As I was writing my paper, I realized that I was drifting away from my diagram, so I decided to read through it several times and edited it to match my diagram, which I think explained the topic with a clear structure. I then added a few more details to my diagram, so that it was clear how they were both related. I also asked one of my hall-mates to look at the diagram first and then read the paper, and then give me feedback on how I could improve my paper to make everything even more straightforward, which was, in my opinion, one of the most helpful things I did.


One of the trials I ran into was editing my sources, because although I used an online editor (www.bibme.org) for my citations, for some reason Microsoft Word would keep deleting them, or organizing them alphabetically instead of according to where they were in the text and what number they corresponded to, which was extremely frustrating as I had to keep going back and editing them time after time.


The most challenging part of this assignment for me was, not only finding appropriate resources, but most of all actually explaining everything in a transparent and straightforward manner. I think that independent research and writing papers are great tools to learn about a specific topic, and feel like I learned a lot thanks to this project. Ultimately, despite all the hard work, I enjoyed writing it and learning something that I had no idea about by myself.

How does MRI work?

Diagram
This week we had to draw a diagram for our paper which represented the way it worked, through the "machine analysis" viewpoint that Dr. Bogen asked us to use. Basically, we had to think of our "process" or "object" (in my case MRI) and describe it as a machine, with the building blocks being each component and what was transferred between them. Then we had to add the properties that govern each block, what was accumulated or balances, what quantities were affected, etc. for each block. Finally, we had to put it all together in diagram form and relate all of the processes to one another.


To me, the hardest part was trying to adapt my subject to the format Dr. Bogen asked us to use. It wasn't so hard to enumerate all the components and which ones were related, but it was very hard at some point to think of precisely what quantities were affected by the transfer, etc. I believe it was so because MRI doesn't lend itself so much to an interpretation in that format, the way that (for example) the machine diagram for flow of blood into left ventricle in diastole (Dr. Bogen's example) did. However, after a lot of research and a creative way of analyzing the MRI and finding out all the different properties and transferred data, I ended up with the following preliminary diagram for MRI (click on it to make it bigger):

I think that, as I'm writing my paper, this will be a good reference to structure my thesis around. Furthermore, because I HAD to make the diagram this way, I'll have more information about how to approach MRIs in a "machine analysis" (i.e. how does it work?) style and therefore my final work should - hopefully - be a lot better!

Research Paper

How does it work?
This month we'll have to complete a research paper on a biomedical topic from an engineering viewpoint. That is, how does something related to the biomedical field work? The only thing I needed to know to begin was what to discuss in my paper.
I was watching House on TV the other day with some friends and we were discussing how medical imaging techniques had changed so much over the course of a few decades, and how useful new machines were to diagnostics - the case in the episode was solved thanks to one in particular, the MRI. This is when I started wondering about magnetic resonance imaging, and found it a very interesting topic, so I decided to focus my paper on this subject. In essence, what I want to find out is:

• How does an MRI machine work?
  
• What are the physics/biological principles that make MRIs possible?
  
• How was it developed?
  
• How is it constructed and how does it operate?
  
• What are its applications?
  
• Are MRIs safe?
  
• What is the future of MRIs going to be?
  

It seems like a pretty interesting subject to discuss, so I'm looking forward to researching how it works and answering my questions!

Structures presentations

Talking about structure...
This week, we had to prepare a brief presentation for class, which I really enjoyed. I think that encouraging independent work in the sciences is one of the greatest challenges for teachers, because (unlike with music, arts and other recreational activities) scientific and engineering-related hobbies can often be expensive and trying, but you can really love them at the same time. Although it was hard to come up with a structure to analyze, I was happy with the final result and I believe I learned a lot from this individual project.
However, what I liked the most was the recitation this week, because we all saw what our classmates think like and how they might interpret things, which I believe can help you learn a lot about them. I also found the structures they chose to analyze very interesting, and enjoyed seeing their different perspectives and ideas on the same objects. Overall, I had a lot of fun!

All you need is LOVE

The LOVE sculpture
For this week's assignment, we had to analyze a "thing" on the Penn campus, and - as I discussed before - I choose the LOVE sculpture on Locust Walk. As I said in my earlier post, I choose it as my subject because it’s one of the staples of Penn’s campus and of the city where we live, Philadelphia.
This structure is a sculpture displaying the letters LO over VE, and was originally designed as the front of a Christmas card for the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) by Robert Indiana. It is a three dimensional model of the word "love"in capital letters and is painted bright red on the front, back and sides and blue and green on the inside. I analyzed this sculpture over three (and a half) length scales:

The sculpture
this is how most of us see the statue, a big body displaying the message "love". On this scale it's roughly 2m (h) x 2m (w) x .5m (d); and is made of poly-chromed red, green and blue aluminum. So this length scale is around two meters). This statue can be compared to the patterns made by rubber inkstamps, as the typeset is reminiscent of that typically used for this purpose, looking as though someone had messed up the letter "o". It also reminded me of a box of chocolates, but mostly (because of the bright color) likening it to the human body it brought to mind the human heart. The statue is located in the center of campus, next to undergraduate admissions, close to the quad and Van Pelt library and right on Locust walk. Its in the middle of everything and is connected to all of campus through the "vascular system"of streets: it's the heart of penn that has the message love imprinted on it.

The letter O
I chose to zero in on the letter O because of it peculiarity within the sculpture. It’s tilted towards the right, which might represent the imperfections of love. The scale of this magnification level is about a meter. This letter could be compared to a toroid (my fancy way of comparing it to a doughnut), because of their similar shape.

The material
This is the third level of magnification, and on this level al we see is the material the love statue is made of (poly-chromed aluminum). The material reminded me of tin cans, because it was cold to the touch and shiny.

The campus of brotherly love
One of the reasons I chose this sculpture was because of its relationship to Philly and Penn. Philadelphia means “city of brotherly LOVE” so I felt like this sculpture on locust walk represented the campus of brotherly love, encouraging friendship and respect among students.

The function of this structure is to provoke thought and promote a positive message: LOVE. It’s an accessible but complex message, and I believe that the artist succeeds in transmitting his message through all three length scales because of various reasons. In the first scale, the bright color and size of the sculpture really attract your attention and have you wonder why the statue would be there. Upon closer inspection, the slanted O draws your eye in and makes you keep it on your mind. And the material  of which it is made complies with its function by making it sturdy and durable in the Philadelphia weather. Therefore, it represents Philadelphia because of the etymological meaning of the cities’ name, causing you to really see and think, and not just look - like this assignment wanted us to do.

Searching for structure at Penn

What's my "thing"?
As soon as I read the assignment for this week's recitation, I knew I was going to have a hard time completing it. It wasn't because of the fact that I couldn't think of a structure to analyze (not that I had that many original ideas, anyway), but rather because I couldn't think of one I would love to analyze. As I was wandering around locust Walk, walking to and from class, making my way to the quad or going to the library, I realized there was one thing that I always noticed when I walked by: the LOVE statue.
At first, I thought it would be too hard to analyze the structure of something so abstract, and that it might be a cliché to use one of the staples of Penn's campus and Philadelphia as my object. I also pondered over the questions that we had to blog about, and I thought that it would be a big challenge to compare the statue to something else and to relate its form to its function. Despite the daunting prospects, I decided to take the plunge and see what would happen if I tried to describe the LOVE statue as a "thing" across three length scales, because - after all - isn't the whole point of this assignment to learn how to connect concrete and abstract things?
I'll be back soon with the final result, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!