Week 6 - Katie

This week I focused on the data analysis needed to complete my project. I have been developing a MATLAB computer code that will allow me to analyze MR images of the rats we use in our experiments.

In the past I don’t think I’ve been entirely clear about what these experiments are, so I will elaborate. In your spine there are the bones, called the vertebrae and the jelly-like spacers, called intervertebral discs or IVDs. These discs grant us motion and help us bear loads. If they become injured they can degrade and/or bulge out of the disc space into the spinal canal. This is thought to be one of the main sources of back pain.

Here at Weill Cornell, we have developed an animal model in rats that allows us to look both at disc degeneration and methods of regeneration in tissue engineering. In Ithaca, I work on creating and improving tissue engineered IVDs that are the size of the discs found in the upper rat tail. These discs can be cultured in vitro or they can be implanted in rats. If they are implanted in rats, there are several ways to measure how the discs are adapted by the body over time. These measurements include xrays and MRIs of the rat tails, and histology and mechanical testing of the segments once the rats are sacrificed.

This summer I have been working on a way to analyze the data obtained from the MR images. The program we were using previously had some difficulties in giving us all of the data we wanted and needed to draw conclusions. My MATLAB program addresses this problem. Now that I am done writing the MATLAB code, I can use it to determine the size of the implanted TE-IVD compared to an adjacent healthy disc, and the amount of water in both the TE-IVD and healthy disc as represented by relaxation times. We have 8 rats and MRIs from 0, 1, 5, and 8 months after surgery. This means that I had to measure the values of 64 discs before data analysis could be performed.

This week I finished all of my measurements and drew some conclusions based on the statistics I ran on the data. This and other MR data obtained from other experiments will be the basis of my final project.
In addition to my project I went to the clinic with Dr. Hartl and attended a surgery on Thursday that required the harvesting of bone marrow aspirate for the fusion of two vertebrae. I was able to see and understand more of the surgery this time as I have a better understanding of the language used in both the surgical and neurology fields than I did a month ago.