Choosing to study Clinical Technology at TU Delft does not fall far from the tree for Saskia van Heumen. Her mother was a medical doctor, her father a software engineer. ‘I always loved my mother’s stories about her internships,’ she says. ‘The human body fascinates me, but a profession as a doctor does not suit me. And I also like technology. That is why I was looking for something in the direction of applied technology in the medical domain. That’s how I ended up at the Open Day of Clinical Technology. That turned out to be the perfect study.’
Medical Imaging
Saskia is one of the first batch of this study, started in 2014. After her bachelor’s degree, she went to England for a year for a post graduate at University College London focusing on medical physics and image processing. ‘I liked it so much that, once back in the Netherlands, I started the master’s program Technical Medicine – Imaging & Intervention, a collaboration between TU Delft, Erasmus MC and LUMC. In the second year of this master you will do four internships of ten weeks in the hospital. I already had quite a bit of theoretical knowledge about medical imaging and was looking forward to putting it into practice. In several hospitals I was allowed to do various studies on the use of images in medical interventions. Such as during my internship in oral and maxillofacial surgery. There I helped create 3D surgical molds based on CT scans, for example of the jaw. The surgeon uses these molds so that he or she knows exactly how to operate. I found that inspiring, because you can immediately see how your research contributes to the quality of care.’
From sound to light
During her graduation internship, Saskia also comes into contact with photo-acoustic imaging. A relatively new and promising technique for making images of the body. ‘We are of course familiar with the ultrasound machine, in which you form an image with sound waves’, explains Saskia. ‘In photo-acoustics you don’t send a sound wave but a light pulse into the body. This LED light is absorbed, which causes tissue to heat up and expand very locally. This creates sound waves. And because different tissue types, but also, for example, injected contrast fluid, absorb the light differently, you can image and distinguish them with different wavelengths. All the resulting sound waves together then form an image.’
Patients
‘It was therefore really fantastic to finally start with the real measurements in patients after all the sometimes frustrating preparations. The patients who took part in the research project first came to the plastic surgeon for the regular examination, and then to me for the photoacoustics. Under the condition, of course, that the images had no influence on the surgeon’s decisions.’ Saskia is proud of the result: ‘With my research, I have taken a first step towards demonstrating that LED-based photoacoustics provide a more detailed picture of the lymphatic vessels and blood vessels than the currently used technique.’