Technology-Guided Therapy (TGT) uses traditional engineering techniques such as triangulation, image processing, rigid rotation transformation and manipulations in Fourier space towards the task of improving how therapy such as surgery, radiation therapy or injected materials is delivered. Spatial targeting and interactive guidance can improve both the specificity (treating only diseased tissue) and sensitivity (delivering therapy more all-diseased tissue). This should result in more complete surgical resections, more exact radiation delivery and better delivery of materials to the disease site. The Center for TGT is a collaboration between engineers in Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering with colleagues on the medical side in the departments of Neurosurgery, Radiation Oncology, Radiology, and Surgery. Students working under the auspices of the REU will work on projects from the basic science research to device development to clinical applications. Examples of projects in the basic sciences are: development and testing of improved Magnetic Resonance Angiography, development of metrics for assessing registration quality or grays-scale based mapping of images across a patient data set. Examples of device include designing, constructing and validating the performance of a new three-dimensionally tracked instrument. Clinical applications are, at present, intracranial, hepatobiliary and spinal with new applications awaiting talented personnel to begin development. We are looking for a group of technology-talented students with diverse skill sets. While any one student need not have all of the following skills, we are looking for students with computer programming, mathematics, physics, physiology, and/or engineering skills. The students who enter the REU will work closely with the faculty member, his or her graduate students and, if appropriate, other REU students. The students who are working on basic science development will not be far from the clinical applications of their work and the students who are working on the clinical applications will ground them in solid scientific approaches.
