Profile

I live in a flat in south London with my partner who works online as a writer. During lockdown, we’ve swapped weekends exploring the city for trying new recipes and walks to the local park. I’ve also been getting into interior decorating and playing Nintendo Switch.

My AC island!

Like the other scientists I work with, I’m looking forward to getting back to the lab to catch up in person very soon!

I’m working on ways we can use a new machine called an MR-Linac that combines MRI with Radiotherapy.

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is a way of making pictures of internal organs like your lungs and liver using a super-strong magnet. It’s 15,000 x stronger than a fridge magnet! And Radiotherapy is a way of treating cancer using radiation to kill cancer cells and leave the healthy parts unaffected.

By combining them, the idea is to see tumours and nearby organs more clearly when we’re treating patients so we can improve the chances of curing the cancer and reducing side effects.

The MR-Linac where I work!

It might not look like much but under the covers is a giant rotating ring that holds the equipment to shoot beams of radiation at the patient from many different angles. This Radiotherapy part sends the beams through the giant magnet of the MRI section.

Under the covers of an MR-Linac

It was really difficult to combine both of these machines into one: It is a new technology and a lot of technical challenges are still being figured out today. That’s where I come in – I am working on the MRI part that allows us to see the organs really well so we can be extra sure the radiation is going to the right places.

In normal Radiotherapy, scientists calculate where the radiation will go in the body with 3D X-ray images that show the bones very well. It’s really important to see the bones for these calculations. We measure radiation energy in the body in units of “Gray” (Gy).

We have to figure out how much radiation will go where. The simulation here is for treating the spine!

MRI images look different from X-ray images: You can see organs better in MRI scans, but you can’t see bones very well. My job is to make fake versions of the 3D X-rays from the MRI scans so we can calculate where the radiation is going to end up right before we treat patients with Radiotherapy.

On the MR-Linac, we need to make fake 3D X-rays so we can calculate where the radiation will go just before we treat the patients.

The specific goal of my PhD is to make fake 3D X-rays for patients’ lungs. The lungs are tricky because they move a lot and so I need my scans to move as well.

Here’s a typical day:

9:00-10:00 Catch up with emails

10:00-11:00 Journal club (discussing a new scientific article with other scientists)

11:00-12:00 Work on developing my MRI code on the computer

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:00 Back to working on my MRI code

14:00-15:00 Read an article I’ve found on something similar to my research

15:00-17:00 Walk down to the hospital (I live close by) to help get some MRI scans

But my day-to-day routine can vary a lot depending on what I need to do at the time! For instance, sometimes I will need to put other things on pause so I can spend time writing scientific papers or preparing presentations.

Here’s me at the beginning of lockdown after I’d just set up my home office!