Gao Min is a name with a very high repetition rate, and today we are not talking about the famous diver Gao Min, nor the famous young female singer Gao Min, but Gao Min, a post-95 medical doctor who hangs the pot and has a unique trick to fight cancer. Although there is only a lot of information about her entry on the Internet, we can see that a rising star of medical research is rising. When she was a bachelor's degree, she had already participated in the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions and won the gold medal, and her and her team's scientific research results have installed a pair of eyes on the latest cancer treatment methods, which has greatly improved the accuracy of cancer treatment, so that medical workers can use instruments to more acutely and accurately find tumors, diagnose and treat cancer, and benefit mankind. So how did she get exposed to the cutting-edge information of cancer treatment, a modern medical puzzle? How groundbreaking is her research in cancer treatment?
In 2018, Gao Min, who was still a doctoral student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, wrote a popular science article entitled "Digital PET Can See the Glasses of a Proton Beam", which used very few words and the most simple and easy-to-understand language to tell what the "all-digital PET" he studied was and what it was used for.
In high-sensitivity terms, the proton knife in modern cancer treatment methods is called "cancer treatment tool", and its advantages are obvious compared with traditional X-ray radiation therapy, proton radiotherapy is more precise, and the side effects are smaller. Gao Min even described its role as a depth bomb, which can accurately lock on cancer cells. However, proton knife treatment is not a panacea at present, and its treatment effect on some tumors is not ideal.
Because the tissues and tumors of the human body will change during treatment, if the tumor changes after the proton is injected into the human tissue, then the proton injection deviates from the treatment range, which makes the doctors very headache. And Gao Min told us that her research is to solve this problem. Her full PET technology can achieve accurate monitoring of the distribution of positron emission nuclei produced by proton beam β + decay, in order to track the delivery dose and range of the proton beam, which is equivalent to equipping the proton knife with "special glasses" to truly help the cancer weapon proton knife accurately lock on cancer cells.
Through high-sensitivity science popularization, we ordinary people seem to be able to have a general impression of digital PET. But the process of scientific research is far from being clearly explained in just one or two lines of text. Through network information, we can understand that since the 1990s, scientists in the medical community around the world have been studying around the precise understanding of the range of protons and the delivery dose, in order to make the proton knife itself a precision treatment method can really track the tumor, but the research in related fields is not easy, and the progress is relatively slow.
Cancer is a general term for a large group of diseases, and when it comes to the treatment of cancer, many people know some terms, such as: surgical treatment, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, most of the imaginable pictures are derived from the shaved head and skinny images in the TV series. According to statistics, there are more than 3.5 million new cancer cases and more than 2 million deaths in China every year. If you take the incidence and death of various cancers in China in 2015 to make a statistic, before the age of 75, the probability of an ordinary Chinese having cancer is about one in four, and the probability of dying due to cancer is about one in seven.
From this point of view, in fact, cancer is not uncommon, but seems to have become a "common disease", so people are very concerned about how to treat cancer after suffering from cancer, how to seek medical treatment. However, because the treatment of cancer is not easy, many times people can only focus on physical health care and cancer prevention, and even anti-cancer vegetables and fruits have appeared. Enough to see how much people would like to see a panacea that would keep cancer from finding itself.
As the saying goes: saving a life is better than creating a seven-level floating massacre, since ancient times, medical workers are highly respected by the world, so in the fight against cancer research on the road to Gao Min, how did her scientific research road open? This skinny little girl who looks full of literary temperament, was admitted to Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2013, and is a classmate who knows how to plan time and is good at learning.
A casual search on the Internet can find that it is not easy to enter Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and the admission score in 2013 was very high, taking the admission score of Sichuan, the average score of science is 610 points, and the minimum score of liberal arts is 594 points. With the entrance ticket to the famous school, Gao Min is more self-disciplined and rigorous, and in the boring laboratory, she can withstand the slow experimentation and serious thinking, and can find fun in her own learning. She once said: "Although there will be a lot of hardships and difficulties on the road of scientific research, the fun of fighting monsters and upgrading can only be experienced here." ”
If the college entrance examination is a relatively fair opportunity for everyone, then studying hard in college is the opportunity you find for yourself. Gao Min in the ivory tower is like bathing in the ocean of knowledge, she likes to take classes, like to do experiments and prefer to participate in scientific research projects. All of this has helped her complete the path from theory to practice, from input learning to personal digestion and thinking.
It is precisely because of these opportunities that she has the opportunity to learn about the relevant knowledge of Chinese medical imaging technology, and also knows the bottleneck of the current development of the field by consulting various materials, so Gao Min sees the direction of her future research. However, it was not until Gao Min met Xie Qingguo, the "first person in digital PET", that she truly opened a new chapter of her study and research in the field of Chinese medical imaging technology.
Mentor Xie Qingguo is the top expert of China's "digital PET", he is not only conducting scientific research, but more importantly, he has completed the process from laboratory to production, transforming scientific research into productivity, so that related technical products can be used in clinical treatment. In fact, digital PET can also be simply understood as an upgrade of PET.
PET full name: positron emission type computed tomography imaging, is the field of nuclear medicine more advanced clinical examination imaging technology. Because of its high sensitivity, high specificity, systemic imaging and good safety, it can now be widely used in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of a variety of diseases, disease judgment, efficacy evaluation, organ function research and other fields, and can also help develop new drugs. It is one of the most advanced medical imaging technologies after ultrasound, CT and MRI.
The applicable population happens to be some patients with incurable diseases, such as: tumor patients, neurological diseases and psychopaths, as well as cardiovascular disease patients. It is understood that 85% of pet examination is now used for tumor examination, which can distinguish malignant tumors, benign tumors and normal tissues, and the diagnostic accuracy rate is more than 90%, and the advantages of PET examination are particularly fully reflected here. Because Gao Min describes it as a pair of eyes in cancer treatment, it can help doctors check whether the malignancy has metastasized, and where it has metastasized, so that the site of metastasis can be seen at a glance.
With such a clear observation, doctors can better arrange the diagnosis and treatment of tumors through these mirror images, when surgery is needed, how the operation is carried out, and which ranges can be more accurately marked. Data show that PET can detect metabolic changes in tumor cells as early as 24 hours after tumor chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In addition to acting on tumor diseases, PET also has some targeted effects on a variety of stubborn diseases such as epilepsy, senile dementia, Parkinson's disease, AIDS encephalopathy, detoxification, and coronary heart disease.
After understanding the superpower of PET, let's talk about all-digital PET, which is actually digitizing PET, but because the ultra-high-speed flash pulse signal is difficult to digitize, PET has always only had analog and analog digital hybrid machines. Although researchers around the world are tackling this worldwide problem, few countries can master all-digital PET. Gao Min's mentor Xie Qingguo is a representative of Chinese research in this field.
According to Xie Qingguo's mentor: digital PET "system, due to the cancellation of analog circuits, to achieve "all-digital" and "accurate sampling" two major breakthroughs, compared with the traditional PET technology, all-digital PET not only has higher imaging resolution and sensitivity, but also has a revolutionary advantage in performance, ease of use and manufacturing speed. It can help healthcare workers get more accurate raw data in clinical treatment.
Since all-digital PET is so powerful and cutting-edge, its related research and translation into clinical use are certainly attracting attention around the world. In the 45th Geneva International Invention Exhibition in 2017, Gao Min, as the only undergraduate student among the 16 members of huake's participation group, also participated in the exhibition, huake's work this time is a high-sensitivity plug-and-play imaging helmet PET project, which is of great significance to anti-cancer invention naturally won the favor of the judges and all walks of life, and what is more interesting is that when everyone sees that standing in front of the stage to receive the award is a gentle and thin girl, many people express doubts. Some people even regarded her as a junior high school student and couldn't help but ask the translator why there were children coming to the exhibition.
Indeed, at this international exhibition of inventions, people come with a rigorous attitude and respect for the concept of science, and this exhibition of inventions opened in Switzerland is one of the longest and largest invention exhibitions in the world, co-organized by the World Intellectual Property And the Swiss Federal Government. Therefore, the emergence of Gao Min on the one hand makes people surprised by her age, on the other hand, they are also surprised by the field of research and the results achieved by her and her team, which can be said to be at the forefront of the world.
Gao Min wrote such a playful paragraph at the end of the article "Digital PET Can See the Glasses of proton Beams": "Secretly tell you, I have an annual goal in 2018, that is, to publish the first journal article of my doctoral career!" The report of the Nineteenth National Congress proposed: "It is necessary to aim at the forefront of science and technology in the world, strengthen basic research, and achieve major breakthroughs in forward-looking basic research and leading original achievements." "Perhaps through cleverness, we can see that we still have many young scientific researchers who are not afraid of difficulties and struggle on the battlefield of scientific research that saves more lives."