Harry Vaassen has become the 7th student in the history of the Technical Medicine programme to graduate with a grade of 10 out of 10. He earned his ‘perfect ten’ for his graduate internship and research at MST. ‘Harry is a natural in the field of Technical Medicine,’ says Prof. Bob Geelkerken, his supervisor. ‘A real techie with a keen eye for the patient and the clinic setting.’
Harry dedicated ten months to his research: based at the department of surgery, his focus was on a new advance in technology to analyse blood flow in the intestines. Healthy blood flow is essential for the healing process after a section of the intestine has been surgically removed. ‘There is only so much a surgeon can tell from the outside about how well a patient’s intestine is healing,’ Harry explains. ‘But this new technology gives them a better way to see how good the blood flow actually is.’
Software
The system itself has been around for some time. A special camera measures the infrared light emitted by a contrast medium in the blood vessels of the intestine. Well-saturated areas emit more light than stretches of intestine with little or no blood flow. ‘Though the system was already in place, it still relied on the surgeon’s visual assessment. For my research, I developed software that automatically assigns hard values to the readings. This enables the surgeon to make very clear choices about which parts of the intestine to remove or leave in place,’ says Harry.
New working group
During his internship, Harry was given the opportunity to set up and lead a new working group in this area. ‘I am incredibly proud that we built this working group from the ground up. It puts us at the forefront of science in this area.’ Running a working group at MST meant that Harry was ideally placed to test his software both on healthy patients with normal blood flow and on patients with impaired intestinal blood flow.
Follow-up research
The surgeons in the working group have guaranteed six months of additional funding for follow-up research. This gives Harry and his group a window of opportunity to explore funding for a formal PhD track. During his internship, Harry was supervised by Prof. Bob Geelkerken (vascular surgeon at MST and professor at M3i-UT), Dr Daan Lips (GE surgeon at MST), Paul van Katwijk MSc (process supervisor at UT), Bryan Wermelink (PhD student at M3i-UT) and Prof. Srirang Manohar (technology supervisor at M3i-UT).
Rectification: In an earlier version of this article, Harry was said to be the 6th student who graduated TM with a grade of 10 out of 10. This is incorrect, he is the 7th.
