Graduation?

One of the things that I regret the most about my time at UIC: BVIS - not finishing.  I went through the (awesome) program, but I never technically finished.  I left for the great California wilds with the research project undone, and it has truthfully been a source of shame for me.

One of those times when you speak up proudly, but mumble the last bit: "Yes, I went to UIC, *but... mumblemumbleresearchprojectunfinshedmumble*."

So!  I am going to finish.  And to aid in that very doable endeavor, I'm going to blog about it as well.  I know it's going to make for scintillating reading.

To start off, I emailed John, the director of the program at UIC now, to find out if I could still graduate at all.  I figured the worst he could say was 'no.'  But, I recieved both a positive answer and the timeline I needed to work in.  That resolved, I decided to scrap my old research on the "Virtual Heart."

I didn't finish the first time, and I had the feeling that if I tried to continue down that road... it was unlikely to happen this time either.  I need a project that I can really get behind.  One that I am likely to enjoy working on most of the time, to get me through that whole 'have to write a ginormous paper' part.

Not to mention, I would truly have to do the literature over again, as most of the articles I had read at the time are already obsolete.  There have been great strides in the virtual world - personally, I've already learned so much about it!  So, not such a great 'research project' now.

One of the things that John asked me was what would I be researching.  This, surprisingly enough, took me aback.  What would I be researching?  Well.... hmph.  What would I be researching?  What would be novel about my project?  What qualified my idea as research potential?

I had this vague idea that I wanted to do something with canines.  And I wanted to concentrate on the skull.  At least most likely.  I had this nebulous concept of 2D to 3D to real time... but then, what would I be researching?  I needed a second opinion.  And I needed to find out what the situation in the veterinarian world actually was.

This was starting to sound like the beginning of a literature review...

I started to research, and it looked very likely that a new type of education was very much needed in the vet world.  But I really wanted to hear from someone close to a 'source.'  So, I was able to get in touch with a Dr. Spriet, from UC Davis, after a bit of perseverance.  I learned that just because people can get very busy, that doesn't mean they are personally ignoring you.  Don't get discouraged.  We had a great talk about the clinical relevance of different projects, the state of veterinary education now, etc.  And I have a much firmer idea of what type of project I want to do now.

So, now I 'just' need to get cracking on a better proposal and then start my literature review.  Have I mentioned that I dislike writing papers? 

The short proposal of a proposal:

Veterinarian programs have been seeing a significant decrease in the number of hours devoted to animal cadaver dissections, turning instead to DICOM slices, and potentially incorporating pro-sections.  This further complicates the learning of complex areas of anatomy, such as the cranial nerves.  Understanding the cranial nerves and their location is especially important when diagnosing node disease in canines, and has been identified as a key difficult study point.  Currently the anatomy of the cranial nerves in canines is taught using a combination of CT and MR slices with basic annotations, power points, journal papers, and anatomy text books.  Cranial nerves are difficult to identify on CT due to contrast resolution, but the bone window for the skull foramina can be located.  Comparing that with the MR slices allows cranial nerves to be located in the most basic sense of the word.  And with actual dissection of the animals becoming much more rare due to time and money constraints, students find the spatial awareness of where cranial nerves are to be hard to understand.

I propose to use a combination of high resolution CT scans and MRI data to build an interactive 3D model of the bones of a canine skull and it's cranial nerves.  The individual bones would be identifiable, as well as the major landmarks and foramina.  The cranial nerves would be added in using Maya, and also be interactive and identifiable.  The structures can be labeled and annotated to increase student knowledge.  Pertinent labels will be identified using the expert help of Dr. Spriet, from UC Davis.  A slider with the CT and/or MRI slice data (superimposed over the 3D model for comparison) will be included to facilitate learning the spacial cues in both 3D and 2D.

Cranial nerves have not been well identified for veterinary students, especially not in an interactive 3D environment.  Combining the DICOM data with the 3D models is a very interesting area of study, and not well researched at this point.  Pairing the two would be a great step forward in the 3D anatomy world as a whole.  While a few people have been able to achieve the combination of a volume rendering of a CT dataset and a 3D surface model, I have not seen slice data combined with a 3D surface model.  However, this is the more likely way a vet will be viewing the data in the practice.  So, combining these learning tools would be of a great benefit to veterinary students.  The process of this development would be CT/MR segmentation (Amira) to 3D (Maya/3D Coat) to Realtime Interactive app (Unity3D).

Obviously, I still have areas to research for my literature review.  I need to better understand canine cranial nerve anatomy, document 3D as a learning tool, and start to research how to begin to combine DICOM with 3D surface models.

Dr. Spriet was also interested in comparing equine cranial nerves with canine, but I was worried that taking it to that level may be overreaching on this project.  I think I could do the segmentation, but I have the feeling that researching and coding the combination of CT and surface models will be an interesting undertaking.  I may be completely wrong, but that would be my initial assessment.