"I am the secret weapon behind the solutions to patients' healthcare problems”
My interest in biology, medicine and science subjects came together within the Bachelor's programme in Biomedical Engineering. During each trimester project, you apply what you’ve learned from the subjects while working together with fellow students. The programme covers subjects such as robotics, imaging, working in the lab on cell biology, differentiating cells, making bone cells, working with biomarkers to find out where cancer cells come from, and many more. It is a fascinating field! The various subjects within your bachelor's programme will immediately orient you toward your Master's in Biomedical Engineering.
Imaging caught my interest
I discovered medical imaging during a module project. During a project for the MST hospital in Enschede, I recorded the structures of the popliteal artery in the leg using MRI. In the TechMed Centre at UT, patients can not only be imaged lying down, but the UT-MRI can also measure patients standing up. The aim was to investigate aneurysms in the popliteal artery using MRI to determine whether surgery is required. I learned what MRI sequence (settings) should be used and how the patient should be positioned in the MRI to image the artery as clearly as possible.
In addition, you learn about the physics behind MRI. During one of the subjects, you learn how magnets and radio wave frequencies in MRI arise signals which can be converted to images. This project and the different imaging subjects triggered my interest in imaging.
Helping radiologists with imaging
The programme offered me every opportunity for development. During my minor, I went to Lisbon, Portugal. It was a unique experience abroad! I got to know a different culture, made international friends and took extra courses such as Machine Learning in which I learned that algorithms can recognise patterns through processing a huge amount of data. Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning and is used more often within medical imaging. It is based on artificial neural networks which can recognize patterns in (medical) images, for example, tumours. After my minor, I decided to continue with the Imaging & In Vitro Diagnostics specialisation of the Biomedical Engineering Master's programme.
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As a Biomedical Engineer, you don’t work directly with patients. However, during my final thesis, I was allowed to attend surgeries and I was present at outpatient interviews. To supports radiologists, I trained a deep learning algorithm to recognize bone invasion of tumours in the lower jaw bone in MRI images. This helps doctors to decide whether a patient needs extensive surgery or not. I worked in a multidisciplinary team with oral surgeons, technical physicians, mathematicians, radiologists and healthcare staff. During this thesis, I was the link between these different disciplines because I could explain the mathematical algorithms to oral surgeons.
After graduation, I started as an R&D Engineer at Quantib in Rotterdam to work further on improving patient care by bringing AI into clinical practice. I am very excited about this new challenge!