Mining stacks of data

All of the interventional radiology (IR) labs at work are capable of spitting out a report that tells about the amount of radiation used in a procedure. Unfortunately, none of them are capable of sending that report to the PACS system with the exception of the newest units.
That means a valuable source of patient radiation dose information usually ends up archived away on optical disk somewhere. Good archiving, lousy search capabilities.

About a year ago we decided to start collecting the dose info so we could find out about the radiation doses patients were getting from IR procedures. The techs were educated on what information the dose reports provided, and we asked them to start printing out the dose summary sheets, which they’ve been doing for the past year.

Then things started getting in the way and while we were still collecting the dose sheets, no analysis of the data was getting done. Now I’ve got close to a year’s worth of data that I’m finally getting around to entering into a database. It’s a lot of typing and data entry.
It will be worth it in the end though I think. All of this dose information is a veritable gold mine and I think it will tell us a lot about what radiation doses in IR procedures are like and how the machines are utilized.

It’s going to take a while to get all the numbers in, but I’m chipping away at it a month at a time. 4 months down so far for one room.

Entering the busy season

The end of the year is usually a pretty busy time of year for me. Normally I’m trying to get the last of the x-ray units tested before heading into the holidays. Add school into the mix and busy turns into crazy.

Four mammography units, 3 CT scanners, 1 RF room, 1 x-ray room and 1 bone density unit left to test. There’s also a ton of other miscellaneous work stuff that needs doing in between all that.

On the school side, one project for bioengineering class and tests/homework/project for stats class.

Top it off with trying to get my research work going again.

I’ll be glad when the end of the semester rolls around.

Eyes bigger than brain?

School starts back up in a couple of weeks.
Signed up for two classes again this semester along with the usual Monday seminar. BioE 850, Clinical Applications in Bioengineering which looked interesting. The other class is a 5 credit Intro to Stats course offered through MUSC’s Biostats and Epidemiology department.
Hopefully I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew this time with these two courses.

Final exam season

Compared to undergrad where I had to deal with taking 5 exams in a week (3 in one day on a few occasions), PhD finals season isn’t so bad.
Today one of my profs sent out an email that informed us only two students wanted to take the final next Thursday, so let’s have the final this Thursday instead!
Crap.
It’s supposed to be similar to the midterm exam we got, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Still, there’s a lot of material to review between now and Thursday afternoon.
Next week will conclude PhD Year 2. Time to solidify my thesis project and work on the qualifier so that I can become a PhD student instead of just a PhD candidate.

Term paper hell

In both my classes this semester (Tissue Engineering and Drug Delivery), I’m being asked to write term papers in the form of research proposals (NIH style) in subject areas that I know absolutely nothing about other than what I’ve learned so far in class.

I have a week and a half to write them.

So. Hosed.