Jimu news reporter Li Bowl rong
Correspondent Ji Xianxian Yang Ya
White face, petite figure, sweet smile... Gao Min, a post-95 doctor in the digital PET laboratory of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, seems to be different from the ordinary people's cognition of doctors, she loves scientific research and is also a lover of Chinese culture, and a sweet smile is her signature, but when it comes to scientific research, it is particularly serious and rigorous. Recently, the international authoritative journal "IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences" ("IEEE Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences") published the latest research results of the Team of Chinese scientist Xie Qingguo online, which was mainly completed by Gao Min and obtained the world's first experimental results of online beam monitoring of proton knives for live animals.
Dr. Gao Min after 95 in the Digital PET Laboratory of Huazhong University of Science and Technology
It is expected to promote the research of proton knife precision treatment to further
The article, published in the IEEE Journal of Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences, is titled "First Results from All-digital PET Dual Heads for In-beam Beam-on Proton Therapy Monitoring."
For the first time, the study used live animals as experimental objects, using digital PET online to monitor the actual range of action and delivery dose of proton beams entering their bodies, and obtained the world's first experimental results of online beam monitoring of proton knives for live animals. Researchers believe that this may be a small step in the history of precision treatment of proton knives, which is expected to solve the world-class problem of online monitoring of proton beams, thereby effectively improving the effect of proton knives on tumor treatment.
Gao Min introduced that since the 1990s, global scientists have been working hard to explore the feasibility of USing PET for proton monitoring, but the positron nuclide half-life produced by proton beams is extremely short, and there are many background scattering gamma photons, so how to quantitatively estimate the delivery dose and range of action of proton beams in human tissues is a huge challenge that has not yet been solved.
Animal living physique knife online monitoring experiment
"To the best of my knowledge, we should be the first research team in the world to obtain results from live actinosural therapy in the bundle." According to Gao Min, the digital PET system using ultra-high count rate can support the signal acquisition in the true sense of the beam, and the beam signal processing algorithm based on the plug and play imaging architecture can suppress the huge radiation background noise, thereby providing a proton beam induced positron activity image with a high signal-to-noise ratio.
According to Gao Min, this work shows that digital PET can provide unprecedented new data for studying the mechanism of interaction between proton beams and biological tissues, and is expected to give birth to a series of new theories, new algorithms, new technologies for proton therapy range verification, and may also find new phenomena in the observation of secondary particles.
Do scientific research with a "hot head" enthusiasm
Since Gao Min joined the digital PET team as a direct doctoral student in 2017, he has been engaged in the research of digital PET in online monitoring of proton therapy.
Speaking of student Gao Min, tutor Xie Qingguo praised: "She was still an undergraduate student and single-handedly went to the Geneva Invention Exhibition to win a gold medal." With a white face and a petite figure, Gao Min, who was still a senior undergraduate at the time, looked more immature than his actual age. On the first day of the exhibition, a foreign expert at the booth opposite Gao Min regarded her as a junior high school student and asked the translator of his peers in doubt: How can there be children to participate in the exhibition? When the translator told the foreign expert that Gao Min was the only person in charge of the exhibition representing the helmet-mounted PET project, the foreign expert was surprised.
Gao Min won the gold medal photo of the Geneva Invention Exhibition
Gao Min has a motto: "While our heads are hot, we must be desperate!" This enthusiasm and dedication was brought to her scientific research career and vividly interpreted with practical actions. In October 2017, Gao Minhe and Italian professor Nicolas of digital PET laboratory went to Taipei Chang Gung Hospital to conduct an experiment on all-digital flat-panel PET for online monitoring of proton beams. For the first time, the oxygen 15 produced by the proton beam hitting the prosthesis was monitored, opening up a new application of digital PET in the direction of proton radiotherapy.
Behind the impressive results is Gao Min's sleepless efforts and persistence. Due to the high cost of proton radiotherapy, the experimental time occupying the treatment room is also "one inch of time and one inch of gold". Gao Min recalled that when she and Nikolai carried more than 80 kilograms of equipment to Chang Gung Hospital, they worked day and night, system construction, equipment debugging, experimental collection to dismantling and clearance, the whole process took only 96 hours. "Due to the very tight beam conditions in the proton hospital, the experiment always starts at about 10 o'clock in the evening after the end of the day's patient diagnosis and treatment, ends at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning of the next day, and then starts preparing for the next round of experiments at five or six o'clock in the morning."
For research work in the field of digital PET, Gao Min is always full of enthusiasm, "Although there will be a lot of hardships and overcome many difficulties on the road of scientific research, the fun of fighting monsters and upgrading can only be experienced here." It only took her 4 days to build a PET system, which also allowed her to find the surprise and fun of building a large Lego. She introduced that the traditional PET construction time is calculated in months or even years, while we are measured in hours. This allowed her to truly experience the revolutionary changes brought about by the modularity, openness and flexibility of digital PET.
Proud protégés like Gao Min can have more than one in the digital PET lab. The laboratory's supervisors, Xie Qingguo, Xiao Peng, Nikolai and other professors, spared no effort to excavate good seedlings, and then patiently cultivated them, waiting for them to blossom and bear fruit. The digital PET lab has also produced many innovative talents, not only leading talents in the field of high-end medical imaging industry, but also scientific and technological pioneers in high-end manufacturing, technical cattle people in The Internet "big factory", and young scholars in the field of scientific research.
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