National labor model Li Shuangshuang: Constantly overcome the problem of ultrasound imaging research and development

■ Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Daily reporter Wen Kun intern Chen Wanying Li Xiuqing

"Those who have established great things in the past will not only have supernatural talents, but also have the will to persevere." On November 24 this year, Li Shuangshuang, as the technical manager of Mindray Medical Technology after the 80s, stood on the podium of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for the third time. This time, she won the honorary title of "National Model Worker". From ordinary engineers to senior engineers in Guangdong Province, to local leading talents and outstanding engineers, for more than 10 years, Li Shuangshuang has led the team to lead the research and development of many ultrasonic frontier technologies such as elastography, applied for 74 patents at home and abroad, completed the "Grand Slam" of municipal, provincial and national science and technology awards, made significant contributions to China's medical cause, and became an excellent representative of the working masses and scientific and technological workers.

"Good people should cut through the thorns and have the courage to do challenging things, not take a smooth path." Li Shuangshuang, from Jingzhou, Hubei Province, has been a confident and cheerful child who has the courage to challenge since he was a child. When she was a student, she set the ambition of "making great ambitions, entering the mainstream, going on the big stage, and becoming a big cause".

In July 2008, after graduating from the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Tsinghua University, she did not stay in Beijing and Shanghai like some of her classmates, switching to "promising" jobs such as finance, nor did she choose to go abroad with the current. Instead, he chose to go south to Shenzhen and entered the private enterprise Mindray Medical as an engineer, engaged in the research and development of domestic medical imaging systems.

More than 10 years ago, although Mindray's products have been singing all the way in the domestic and foreign markets, they have not been able to enter the high-end market, and the root cause is that the products are mainly imitated and followed, and lack the core technology of independent intellectual property rights.

As a newcomer in the workplace, the company let Li Shuangshuang lead the pre-research of cutting-edge ultrasound new technologies. It is very rare not to be senior and willing to give new people a chance. Although it is more boring to do research and development, the company encourages young people to make a difference and dare to give important work to young people, which makes her like this job more and more.

Soon, a new diagnostic technique, "ultrasound elastography," caught her attention. Elastography technology mainly provides new detection methods for auxiliary diagnosis of major diseases such as breast cancer and cirrhosis by extracting the hardness information of human tissues for imaging, and has huge clinical demand and market space. When she submitted her pre-research results to the company's supervisors in detail and completely, it attracted the company's attention and began her 10 years of arduous research and development.

Research and development work is extremely lonely, especially the international cutting-edge shear wave elastic technology, not only lack of literature and engineering research data, but also lack of experts who can guide the direction in times of difficulty, all rely on Li Shuangshuang's own hundreds of times of experimental research to gradually accumulate experience, and the platform for experimental design and research must also be designed and built by themselves.

In a small laboratory of 8 square meters, Li Shuangshuang was left alone. After 5 years of persistence, she has overcome key technical difficulties and laid a solid foundation for productization. The process of technology into products is also arduous, Li Shuangshuang led more than 10 engineers from multiple departments such as systems, software, hardware, probes, etc., carefully crafted on various technical indicators, humbly consulted clinical experts, and bravely proposed a number of unique innovative designs of Mindray, and finally successfully launched the only high-end shear wave elastic color super product in China in 2015. After the case studies of more than a dozen well-known domestic tertiary hospitals led by Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, it has been confirmed that the diagnostic performance of related technologies for the differential of benign and malignant breast cancer has reached the international leading level.

The successful research and development of high-end elastography color ultrasound with independent property rights has made China at the forefront of the world in the research of cutting-edge ultrasound clinical technology. At the beginning of 2018, at the National Science and Technology Awards Conference, Li Shuangshuang won the second prize of the 2017 National Technological Invention Award for the project of "Key Technologies and Applications of Ultrasonic Shear Wave Elastography". At the end of 2019, Li Shuangshuang won the 21st China Patent Gold Award for "a displacement detection method and device in elastography". By the end of 2019, Li Shuangshuang, as one of the main inventors, has applied for 74 domestic and foreign patents, of which 14 have been authorized, including 11 domestic invention patents and 3 American invention patents.

"If a person wants to succeed, he must set a lofty goal, and then move forward step by step along this goal, and do this thing to the extreme, in order to achieve something in continuous progress." Li Shuangshuang said. To this day, Li Shuangshuang still insists on working in the front line of research and development, and together with many R&D engineers of Mindray, strives for the progress of the motherland's medical cause.

Source: Shenzhen Special Economic Zone News