PhD project at the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine in the Diagnostic Image Analysis Group (DIAG).Promotors: Prof. dr. ir. Nico Karssemeijer, Prof. dr. Jelle O. BarentszCopromotor: Dr. ir. Henkjan J. HuismanTitle: MRI guided TRUS prostate biopsy - a viable alternative to TRUS-guidance?My research focusses on technical and clinical aspects of MRI guided TRUS biopsy applied to prostate cancer. Can biomechanical finite element modeling improve the MR-US registration accuracy? What is the required registration accuracy? Can MRI guided TRUS biopsies replace in-bore MRI-guided biopsies?Tasks:- Development of an MR-US registration method- Using a biomechanical finite element of the prostate to simulate deformations- Programming experiments with Matlab/MeVisLab- Clinical trial on MRI guided TRUS prostate biopsies- Working according to Good Clinical Practice and applying for approval of Medical Ethical Committee- Writing scientific articles - Presenting results at conferencesAdditional:- Supervising bachelor and master students of multiple disciplines (biology, biomedical sciences, technical medicine) during their internship- Managing the image database of the clinical multicenter PCMM trial, collecting MR and US images at Radboud University Medical Center- Maintaining the websites of the department- Reviewing papers for journals/conferences

Leading an international multicenter clinical trial regarding MR-TRUS fusion prostate biopsies. The project is in cooperation with Toshiba Medical Systems. The main objective is to determine the clinical effectiveness of MR guided TRUS biopsies in comparison with in-bore MR guided biopsies.

1-on-1 tutoring of pupils in mathematics, physics, and chemistry

Visited the UCL Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC) for research purposes. Part of my PhD project is in collaboration with the UCL. I went there to discuss future work on MR-US registration using biomechanical modeling. I also took a look in the operating theatre, were the MR-US registration method was used for HIFU ablation of the prostate.

Master's Internship at TNO Science and Industry, Medical, in Eindhoven.Title: In vivo spectral differentiation of human tissue.I was involved in the in vivo tissue measurements in the operating room during surgery at the Canisius-Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis in Nijmegen. Diffuse reflectance spectra were collected during robot-assisted radical prostatectomy. The spectra were analysed and processed in Matlab.

Teaching assistant in thermodynamics and mathematics for Bachelor students. Assisting students in practical and theoretical assignments.

Master's Internship at Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Department of Neurology/Clinical Neurophysiology.Title:Motor unit properties: transmission of cortical motor drive and motor unit loss.During this internship I investigated how cortical information is transmitted to the EMG signal, particularly the effectiveness and frequency dependence of this transmission. I used and expanded an existing model of the alpha-motoneuron in Matlab. This computational model was also used to calculate the MUNIX during loss of muscle strength. I also did EMG measurements on healthy subjects for MUNIX.

Bachelor's internship at the Institute of Molecules and Materials, research group Spectroscopy of Solids and Interfaces.Title:Magneto-optics of plasmonic structures.The goal was to determine plasmon resonances by measuring spectroscopic transmission through plasmonic aperture arrays. I build the instrumental setup including the outlining of the laser.