Hi Janneke, thanks for talking to us today about your PhD journey with the SHERPA project. What drew you to the field of interventional radiology?
Firstly when I started, I wanted to study medicine. However, I was also very interested in biomedical science. I started doing a bachelor's in health and life sciences with a biomedical track and then I did my master's in broader clinical science, which I really liked because you have a bit more clinical applications and real life situations. After my master's, I saw a vacancy on LinkedIn for this PhD project within the Sherpa consortium. What really attracted me to this specific project is that it combines imaging with translation to real-life clinical situations.
Can you explain what your project is about?
I’m exploring blood vessel segmentation in the brain, looking for certain parameters about the shape of these vessels and the blood flow. For now, it’s about trying to characterise these parameters. The goal is to someday use those parameters to better predict rupture of aneurysms in the brain.
What happens when aneurysms rupture in the brain?
Aneurysms can rupture and cause a brain bleed, which can lead to serious complications and be life threatening. The risk of rupture is weighed against the treatment risks when deciding whether to treat.
How will interventional radiologists be able to use your research results to better predict aneurysm rupture?
We use 4D flow MRI, together with advanced post-processing techniques to assess hemodynamics, the blood flow within these vessels. The goal is that when the aneurysm is imaged, we can assess how the blood flows through the aneurysm and the shape of the aneurysm. Then we can combine these two and see that the blood flows in this specific way and the shape looks like this. We can then say, the risk of rupture is high, so we need to treat it. Or the risk is not that high, so we refrain from treating because the complications with treatment may be higher than the actual benefit.
How does that compare to what happens today?
Today, clinicians do look at the shape, size and growth of the aneurysm, but they don't know if this is the best way to predict if it's going to rupture or not.
That’s why we are looking at the blood flow - it’s really an interplay between the blood flow and the shape of the aneurysm. Both shape and flow patterns are known to play a key role in aneurysm characterisation and rupture risk prediction. Eventually the segmentation and quantification of shape and flow parameters will become an automatic pipeline. So you get the image, you run the segmentation and extract the flow and shape parameters. It will outline the rupture risk and give you a recommendation on whether the aneurysm should be treated or not.
How is AI involved?
We’re training an AI model right now. AI can automatically segment vessels and then you can extract relevant flow parameters.
SHERPA is a public-private consortium with many partners across Europe. Where is your main base?
I'm working in the university hospital UMC Utrecht. My PhD is quite clinically based, and I can walk over to the MRI where patients with aneurysms are being scanned. Because the 4D flow is not yet standard in follow-up for aneurysms, clinicians usually request an MR angiography (MRA) to monitor aneurysms. MRA is a non-invasive scan that uses magnets and radio waves to evaluate blood vessels and help identify abnormalities. We added the 4D flow to the standard imaging protocol at the hospital, so that we can use these images for research purposes as well. We integrated it into the protocol so that not every patient, but many of the patients who are coming for a follow-up aneurysm scan also get the 4D flow and we can then use this information to further our research.
SHERPA involves partners from seven EU countries. Do you have the opportunity to interact with researchers from other countries?
We met the other PhD students at the SHERPA consortium meeting a few weeks ago, and we talked about our work and how we could collaborate and combine our data sets. At the end of the year, I’m going to Barcelona with a few of the other PhD students to talk about how we can collaborate. The Barcelona Institute is also working with 4D flow, so that's quite cool.
How do you find working with the industry partners?
At the consortium meeting in Barcelona, I met people from Phillips, Sim & Cure and other medtech companies. It was really nice to get to know them and it gives you a sense of how big the consortium really is and how many partners are working on it. It’s also very valuable for my future work, because it does give you access to certain advanced imaging technologies. It’s nice to talk to people who do not work in academia to see how they view certain problems, because sometimes they have different priorities or different timelines in mind. It’s really interesting to talk to multiple people in the industry who all believe in their own product. Everyone has different priorities, but we all have the same goal in mind.
How do you think that this experience will help to shape your future career?
I'm still in the early stages, but I'm keeping an open mind as to which exact direction I want to go in. I do know I like being in the field of connecting technology and clinical application. I want to stay in the area of translating research into real life situations. But what does that look like? I'm not entirely sure. I might stay in academia, I might go to the industry, who knows?
What would you say to someone who was considering applying for a PhD that was part of a public-private partnership?
Well, I would say definitely it has a lot of advantages, so I would recommend looking for a PhD within public-private partnerships. I'm still in the early stages, but it can help you further in your career. Within such partnerships, you get certain connections, which are really important, and you can collaborate on things. The public-private nature of the SHERPA project helps to make connections in both industry and academia and I think that eventually, if I want to move to industry, it's an easier bridge.