UCL MEDICAL PHYSICS AND BIOENGINEERING
Transforming technology into healthcare
Medical Physics and Bioengineering
Annual Newsletter 2013
1
Welcome
Welcome to the second edition of the Newsletter
of the UCL Department of Medical Physics AND
Bioengineering
Our Newsletter highlights some of the new and exciting
research activity in the department, and includes various
news items about the department which we hope will be
of particular interest to former students and staff. We include
reports on recent research including photoacoustic imaging and
MRI, novel applications of x-ray imaging and radiotherapy,
and an article from our new Biomedical Ultrasound Group.
We also have a piece written by one of our undergraduate
students, as an example of the type of student project we can
offer. We are particularly pleased to include articles from our
colleagues from Medical Physics and Bioengineering, and
Radiotherapy Physics in UCLH. We hope you enjoy it.
If you have any questions or comments, we would be delighted
to hear from you, via medphys.newsletter@ucl.ac.uk.
Jeremy C. Hebden | Head of Department
ConTACTS
Department of Medical Physics & Bioengineering
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/medphys
Tel: 020 7679 0200
Email: medphys.newsletter@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @UCLMedphys
2
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Departmental news
new UNDERGRADUATE programmes
in Biomedical Engineering
The UCL Faculty of Engineering is introducing a common
framework for its undergraduate degree provision across all
nine departments, known as the Integrated Engineering
Programme. As part of this initiative, our department is
introducing new 3-year (BEng) and 4-year (MEng) degrees
in Biomedical Engineering. The first cohort of students in
expected to join us in September 2014. The programmes will
cover core engineering subjects and skills development during
the first two years, with an increased focus on medical physics
and biomedical engineering topics during the third and fourth
years, including an individual research project. The programmes
will be given a unique flavour, drawing upon the distinctive
expertise of the department and UCL’s broader biomedical
engineering community.
Sports Day
Infrastructure changes
The past two years have probably been the department’s most
successful in its history in terms of generating research grant
income. Accommodating the increase in our research activity
has meant optimising the usage of all available space in the
department. During the past year, our former small meeting
room (Room 3.09) has been converted into a laboratory, as
has a small storeroom on the second floor of the Malet Place
Engineering Building (Room 2.23). We have also significantly
increased the maximum occupancy of the student study room
on the first floor (Room 1.18), while utilising the former study
room next door (Room 1.17) to accommodate researchers in
our radiation physics group. Meanwhile, plans are in progress
to refurbish our seminar and teaching room (Room 1.19)
with state-of-the-art electronic teaching equipment, and to
redecorate and refurnish our common room (Room 3.14).
Forty-five staff and students took part in an annual
Departmental Sports Day in June 2012, held at Highgate
Cricket & Tennis Club in north London. While some indulged
in a broad range of sporting activities, such as tennis, football,
and egg-and-spoon races, others just relaxed in the sun during
one of the summer’s rare warm and sunny days. The event
concluded with the traditional tug-of-war and a barbeque.
1
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Departmental news
Departmental Retreats
first departmental Open Day
In July 2012 we held our second Summer Retreat. Fifty-five
members of staff spent a day-and-a-half at Pendley Manor
Hotel in Hertfordshire. The event involved a mix of
“formal” sessions intended to address different areas of
work activity such as teaching and research, and team
challenges intended to encourage greater communication
and cooperation between department staff (of which most
took place on the extensive hotel lawn among the native
peacocks). The challenges were given an Olympic 2012
flavour, and members of teams finishing first, second and
third were presented with gold, silver and bronze medals.
Another Retreat was organised for, and by, the department’s
PhD students. In November 2012, thirty-six students spent
two nights at a youth hostel in the New Forest. They performed
a variety of outdoor and indoor activities, including various
team challenges and an expedition. The delicious home-cooked
meals, unseasonably warm weather, and beautiful location
also ensured that the Retreat was an unforgettable success.
On 31 May 2013, we will be holding our first Departmental
Open Day. The aim is to promote our research and encourage
collaborations within UCL, UCLH and beyond. We will
have 10 stands in the North Cloisters featuring hands-on
demonstrations of our work.
Joel Lecture
The Joel Chair is the oldest chair in the world in the field
of Medical Physics. It was established in 1920 following a
large donation to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School
by the Barnato-Joel family in 1913. An annual lecture to
celebrate the importance of the Chair in Medical Physics was
established in 2012 and the first Joel Lecture was given by
Professor Steve Webb on the subject of Intensity Modulated
Radiotherapy (IMRT) and its development. This year,
Professor Peter Wells CBE FRS will present the Joel Lecture.
Peter’s lecture will be on imaging with ultrasound and is
entitled “Inside the human body: Seeing with ultrasound”.
2
Other news
New Arrivals
Jamie Harle – Coordinator of our Distance Learning MSc.
Andy O’Reilly – Personal Assistant to the Head of Department.
Liz Zuzikova – Departmental Receptionist.
Promotions
Sebastien Ourselin has been promoted to Professor
of Medical Image Computing.
Ben Cox is now a Senior Lecturer.
Research highlights
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Explosive detection
using X-ray diffraction
Authors: Daniel O’Flynn, Christiana Christodoulou and Robert Speller
Typical X-ray baggage scanners measure the amount
of X-rays which pass through materials, giving an
image of the items inside a bag or parcel based on their
density and the types of atoms they are made from. This
approach is effective for finding metal items such as
guns and knives, but struggles when identifying plastic
explosives since they absorb X-rays in a similar way to
typical baggage items. X-ray diffraction (XRD) is an
alternative scanning technique which probes molecular
structure. Each material has a unique structure, and so
XRD can effectively be used to fingerprint hidden items.
In collaboration with the UK Home Office and Department
for Transport, funded by the Innovative Research Call 2010,
we are currently working at UCL to develop a system for
scanning baggage and packages using XRD. Typically, XRD
is a technique which is either too slow or too impractical
for use in security applications. We aim to overcome these
limitations by using a novel X-ray detector developed by
the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The detector can
simultaneously measure the position and energy of X-rays
which have been scattered after hitting an object – these two
characteristics previously could only be measured separately.
It is possible to view snapshots at constant energies; for
example the image above shows only X-rays with an energy
of 20 keV which have been diffracted by the sample. The two
distinctive arcs change size according to the energy window,
and their behaviour, diffracted by a sample of caffeine is
directly linked to the molecular structure of caffeine.
A large challenge for this project was to untangle the vast
quantities of data we measure in order to obtain meaningful
information on the materials under study, which range
from explosive materials to everyday items like sugar or
toothpaste. We have devised a way of combining the patterns
shown into a single overall picture of the sample, retaining
the important diffraction features in space and energy –
this is our diffraction fingerprint. With this technique we
are able to show that even with data collected for just one
second we can correctly identify explosive materials.
4
Image: The behaviour of X-rays diffracted by a caffeine sample
What is X-ray diffraction?
Waves passing through a small opening begin to spread
out with a circular wavefront. If there are two such
openings, two circular sets of waves are produced, which
can then interact with each other. These waves will
interfere either constructively (the waves get larger) or
destructively (the waves get smaller, or vanish completely).
This effect can be observed with water waves, sound
waves or even light waves – including X-ray radiation.
The positions at which the waves constructively interfere
are related to the spacing between the openings,
which in the case of X-ray diffraction is the space
between the different layers of atoms in a material.
Facing up
to disfigurement
Author: Clifford Ruff
Facial disfigurement can have a dramatic effect on
the way people see themselves and the way they are
perceived by society, this is especially true for children.
Reconstructive surgery can result in a significant
improvement in quality of life, especially when
preoperative counselling has provided the patient
with realistic expectations of the surgical outcome.
It is often impossible to achieve a perfect result following
reconstructive surgery, however it is important to achieve
the best result possible for the individual patient. Current
surgical techniques allow augmentation of areas in the
bony skeleton by using the patient’s own bone, or by
using other materials such as titanium. It is also possible
to augment the soft tissues by transplanting skin, muscle
and fat from elsewhere on the patient’s body.
To plan a reconstruction it is not enough to just know
precisely where the deformity exists, it is also important
to know how much tissue is required, where it is required,
what shape it needs to be and what existing deformed
tissues need restructuring. To answer these questions the
Medical Graphics and Imaging Group at UCLH, has been
mathematically modelling the facial features, both on the skin
and underlying skeleton, of both the normal population and
patients suffering from a range of congenital deformities.
The second thread compares the deformity of an individual
patient with the normal population to assist in planning the
reconstruction, in order to achieve the most aesthetically
pleasing solution that is achievable for that patient. The
planned reconstruction has to be surgically achievable, with
any implanted material matching the patients’ anatomy in
the areas that are not being reconstructed. In some cases,
physical models of the reconstruction are made on a rapid
prototyper, to guide the surgeon when harvesting and
shaping the patients tissues prior to transplantation.
As part of this project the department has a 3D camera
system that allows us to capture faces in high resolution
in 3 dimensions. The camera is non-invasive and nonionising, allowing us to capture images of both patients
and the general population. In 2012 the camera was set
up in the London Science Museum for three months as
part of the Live Science exhibition, where over 12,000
3D facial images of normal volunteers were captured.
There are two main threads to the modelling work, the first
looks at the facial features associated with various syndromes
(Aperts, Crouzons, Treacher Collins, etc.) themselves in order
to gain an understanding of the facial features characteristic
of each syndrome. The resulting models are then compared
to the models of the normal population, thus allowing the
surgeon to assess and visualise the full extent and range
of 3D deformations associated with each syndrome.
5
Biomedical
Photoacoustic Imaging
Author: PAUL BEARD
Photoacoustic imaging is a new biomedical imaging
modality based on the use of laser-generated
ultrasound. It is widely viewed as one of the most
exciting and promising imaging techniques to have
emerged in recent years offering major opportunities
for increasing our understanding of basic biological
processes and improving the clinical diagnosis and
treatment of cancer and other major diseases.
The Photoacoustic Imaging Group has been at the forefront
of the field since its foundation in 2003. Back then, when
the technique was very much in its infancy, it tended to be
viewed by the biomedical imaging community as something
of a fringe activity involving interesting physics pursued by
a small band of eccentrics with little prospect of ever getting
it to work in any practical sense. In some respects, this
pessimistic view was understandable given the formidable
technical challenges involved in producing images from the
extremely weak photoacoustic signals generated in tissue.
Thankfully these challenges were largely overcome, the
eccentrics prevailed and the pessimists were proved wrong.
Since then the field has witnessed tremendous growth with
more than 50 groups worldwide now active in the field,
the appearance of the first commercial scanners and the
first steps towards practical application in medicine and
biology being taken. This expansion has been matched by
the growth of our group which now comprises more than 20
researchers making it one of the largest worldwide devoted
to the development of biomedical photoacoustic methods.
Photoacoustic imaging works by irradiating the surface of the
skin with low energy, nanosecond pulses of visible or nearinfrared laser light, typically in the 600-900nm wavelength
range. Due to the relative optical transparency of soft tissues
at these wavelengths, the light penetrates deeply (several cm)
and is also strongly scattered, resulting in a relatively large
tissue volume becoming “bathed” in diffuse light. Absorption
of the laser light by molecules such as haemoglobin leads
to a harmless temperature rise of a fraction of degree and
the subsequent generation of acoustic pulses at ultrasonic
frequencies. These acoustic pulses propagate to the tissue
surface where they are detected by an array of ultrasound
6
detectors. By measuring the time-of-arrival of the pulses at the
detectors relative to the firing of the laser pulses, it is possible
to reconstruct a full three dimensional image of the internal
tissue structure based upon its optical absorption properties.
The fundamental advantage of the technique is that, by
encoding optical absorption on to acoustic waves it avoids
the penetration depth/spatial resolution limitations of purely
optical imaging techniques such as light microscopy or diffuse
optical tomography that arise from the strong optical scattering
of tissue. At the same time it retains the high molecular
based contrast and spectral specificity of optical methods
enabling visualisation of anatomical features indistinguishable
with other imaging modalities such as ultrasound.
The technique is particularly well suited to visualising
blood vessels on account of the strong optical absorption
of haemoglobin. Exploiting this capability for studying the
abnormal blood vessel networks associated with tumours
with a view to improving the diagnosis and treatment of
cancer has been an important focus of our work. As part
of this effort we have pioneered a completely new type of
photoacoustic imaging instrument based upon on a highly
sensitive optical ultrasound detector. We have now developed
a high resolution photoacoustic scanner based on this
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
principle which can provide exquisite 3D images of tissue
structures as illustrated in the figures here. The success of this
approach is a consequence of the combination of the very
high sensitivity of the detector and the use of novel image
reconstruction algorithms based on time-reversal principles
that compensate for the resolution degrading effects of tissue
acoustic attenuation. In collaboration with colleagues at the
UCL Cancer Institute (Barbara Pedley and Martin Pule) and the
Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (Mark Lythgoe) we
have used this system to explore the potential of photoacoustic
imaging as a preclinical imaging tool. An important example
of this work is a study in which we imaged the growth of the
vasculature of a whole subcutaneous tumour and its subsequent
destruction by a cancer drug that works by selectively
inhibiting blood flow in tumour vessels – something that has
not previously been possible using any imaging modality.
As well as demonstrating the potential of the technology as
a research tool for evaluating new cancer therapies, these
studies illustrate its broader potential application in
biomedicine. For example, it could be used clinically for
the diagnosis and treatment monitoring of skin cancers,
cardiovascular disease and inflammatory skin conditions.
Indeed, following the recent award of an EPSRC/Cancer
Research UK grant to set up a Cancer Imaging Centre with
King’s College London, we plan to construct a dedicated
clinical scanner and undertake human studies to explore the
use of photoacoustic imaging for the assessment of head
and neck cancers.
development of the technology marches forward in the
quest to develop more sensitive detectors, more accurate
and faster image reconstruction methods and find ways of
extracting physiological and molecular information from
photoacoustic images. A particularly promising new avenue
is the development of miniature endoscopic probes that can
be inserted into the body to provide images of the interior
of hollow organs such as the colon for cancer detection or
coronary arteries for the assessment of cardiovascular disease.
This area offers the prospect of opening up an entirely new
branch of medical imaging with many new applications
in interventional oncology, cardiology and surgery.
Image, page left: In vivo 3D photoacoustic image of
tumour vasculature in a mouse model of colorectal cancer
Image, above: Photoacoustic images of a colorectal tumour
showing its progression over a 5 day period
With the underlying feasibility of the technology now
demonstrated, the future prospects for photoacoustic imaging
are exciting. After several years of intensive effort devoted
to refining the instrumentation and image reconstruction
methods, the translation to practical application in
medicine and biology is underway. At the same time the
7
Measuring respiration with an accelerometer:
an undergraduate project
Author: Jonathan Mayhew
Currently in my fourth year of Medical School,
I chose to study Medical Physics and Bioengineering
for my intercalated BSc; not many medical students
have an appreciation of physics, so it is often
overlooked as a choice.
Luckily I was contacted by Dr Gibson after my project
finished with details of a potential vacation bursary from
EPSRC through the Engineering Faculty. I was keen to
pursue the technology further, and the grant was available
to repurpose the prototype device for use in the detection of
breathing. Simply put, there is a lack of cheap, comfortable,
and non-invasive automated respiration rate monitors in
routine clinical practice, so the idea was to detect breathing
from the physical displacement of the chest wall using
the accelerometer. It was very easy to jump back into the
research, and all the skills I had learnt throughout the year
meant I could get straight back into complex LabVIEW
programs without a problem. Although concerned about
timing and workload, I was able to balance these effectively,
and even managed to fit in a part-time job working at the
London 2012 Olympic Games in the Athletes’ Village.
I chose it mainly for the problem-solving nature of the
material, and also because medicine is increasingly dependent
on technology in terms of imaging, radiotherapy, as well as
interventional radiology. I genuinely enjoyed my time in the
department, as the courses were very well structured, and
the methods of teaching were diverse: I even achieved
YouTube fame with a video I made about EEG for
Dr Adrien Desjardins’ Biophysics course.
My project with Dr Adam Gibson and Dr Nick Everdell
concerned motion detection and analysis during seizures. I was
drawn to the project initially because it sounded novel. The
first phase involved building a simple accelerometer and then
writing LabVIEW programs to extract and process data from
the device, and the second phase involved actually collecting
data from a range of everyday arm and hand motions to test the
ability of the system to discriminate them. My project involved
a lot of LabVIEW programming, which had a steep learning
curve, as I had no programming experience. However I found
that as the project went on I became much more proficient
using it. It was also a lot of fun to have a tangible, physical
side to the project: being able to design and build a prototype
device involved learning many new skills, and having something
to physically test ensured that I didn’t lose sight of the goal.
8
Now I’m in my first year of clinical training, and I’m glad
I chose to do my BSc in Medical Physics; not least because
of the skills I’ve learned, but also because of the head-start it
gives in terms of understanding medical technology.
Knowledge of artefacts and the limitations of imaging devices
can save embarrassing conversations with colleagues and
certainly help prevent medical errors.
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Proton induced X-ray emissions
for range verification in proton therapy
Authors: Vanessa La Rosa, Adam Gibson, Gary Royle
Approximately 1200 cases of eye cancer are diagnosed
each year worldwide. The tumours occur more often
in the back of the eye and is called “uveal melanoma”.
Proton radiotherapy is ideal for treating eye cancers
since it can be tuned so that it deposits radiation
dose in the tumour region whilst minimising dose
to critical healthy tissue such as the optic nerve.
radiation-related side effects are the most important variables
to keep into account. Gold was chosen for our preliminary
experiments due to its well-known properties of compatibility
with the human tissues. However more encouraging results
were obtained with metals with a lower atomic number, which
will be used for the future development of this application.
The success rate of proton radiotherapy for eye cancer is
about 95%. However, a significant number of patients may lose
vision. This occurs when the optic nerve, which may be sited
directly behind the tumour, is damaged by the treatment.
Current treatments include an uncertainty of about 2 mm on
distance travelled by the protons in tissue (the “range”). Rather
than trying to minimise the effect of this uncertainty, we aim to
develop a method for verifying the range during treatment.
The method we have been investigating exploits the proton
induced x-ray emissions (PIXE) from a metal marker which is
implanted near to the optic nerve prior to the treatment. The
number of characteristic x-rays depends on the energy and the
number of the protons interacting with the marker. Therefore
they can be used to determine the range in tissue and the dose
delivered to the optic nerve. If x-ray emissions are observed,
this tells us that we may be irradiating the optic nerve, so we
can turn the beam off and restart the treatment with a reduced
proton range. In this case the optic nerve would be spared
from unwanted proton dose.
Image, above: Vanessa La Rosa carrying out experimental
work on the beamline at CATANA
We used a compact x-ray detector to perform preliminary
measurements at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre proton
therapy facility (UK) and at the CATANA proton beam line
(Italy). Computer simulations were also carried out in order
to plan the experimental set up, design the shielding for the
detector, optimise the signal-to-noise ratio and predict the
possible outcome.
The choice of the most suitable metal is a key point of this
research study, as it will define the accuracy with which the
proton range can be estimated. Getting a good signal even
when at low proton energies (i.e. small range errors) is critical
for this application to be clinically useful. On the other
hand, biocompatibility of the chosen metal and possible
9
UCLH
Radiotherapy Physics
Authors: Reshma Patel and Georgina Bagge
Radiotherapy is the treatment of cancer with ionising
radiation. Human tissue cells are damaged by ionisation
of their DNA bonds, leading to the death of the cell
when it tries to replicate. The success of radiotherapy
in controlling cancerous growth without excessive
damage to healthy tissues depends both on biological
factors (differential cell resistance and repair) and
on confining the high radiation dose to the tumour
volume while minimising the dose to surrounding
tissues and organs (Therapeutic Ratio). The role of
medical physicists is to explore and develop techniques
and modalities to improve the therapeutic ratio,
thus improving the outcome of cancer treatment.
The Department of Radiotherapy Physics at UCLH,
based in 250 Euston Road (1st Floor, East), is part of the
multi-disciplinary team in the cancer services directorate
which also includes the radiotherapy, haematology and
chemotherapy departments. The Radiotherapy Physics
Department, which comprises of fifteen physicists, three
planning radiographers and four radiotherapy engineers,
provides scientific and technical support to the Radiotherapy
Department. This includes dosimetry (treatment planning),
quality assurance, and engineering services (sometimes in
conjunction with manufacturers) needed to maintain the
Radiotherapy Department’s treatment and imaging systems
in good and safe working order. The Radiotherapy Physics
Department provides support for brachytherapy planning
using 2D and CT data for gynaecological malignancies,
high dose rate prostate brachytherapy, bronchial and
oesophageal brachytherapy and a variety of head and
neck and sarcomas. We also administer Iodine-131 for
thyroid cancer and are responsible for the monitoring and
discharge of all patients undergoing molecular therapy.
The department strives to be at the cutting edge of technology
to deliver high precision, highly conformal radiotherapy
treatments for cancer patients. We were among the first
institutions in the UK to introduce both intensity X-ray
Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and Volumetric Modulated
Arc Therapy (VMAT) techniques, in conjunction with
improved accuracy in delineation and localisation of tumours
by registering MRI, PET/CT and now PET/MR with planning
scans. We were the first in the UK to treat patients with the
10
latest “TrueBeam” accelerator, with innovative FFF beams of
high intensity, superior mechanical accuracy for Stereotactic
Radiotherapy and integrated On-Board Volumetric Imaging.
We are involved in many research collaborations with the
UCL Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering.
We are studying patterns of tumour and organ motion during
treatment with a view to develop models that can predict
these changes. We are developing methods of following
the changes in patient shape and internal density and of
calculating in real time the effect of these changes on the dose
distribution. We are engaged in improving the accuracy and
registration of dose delivery to the required volumes, taking
into account the movements we measure. The ultimate aim is
Adaptive Radiotherapy (ART), that is, to modify the treatment
parameters to continually adapt to the biological changes in
the patient, thus improving the therapeutic ratio by delivering
the full dose to the tumour while sparing healthy tissues.
Another new exciting approach to improve the therapeutic
ratio is to use a different radiation modality known as Proton
Radiotherapy. These beams of charged particles have markedly
different dose deposition properties than X-rays and offer
significant advantages in sparing healthy tissues, while fully
irradiating tumours even in difficult anatomical locations.
This treatment modality, currently available in only about 30
centres worldwide, is especially indicated for children and young
adults, as it promises to markedly reduce side effects of treatment
over their long life expectancy.
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
UCLH, together with Christie Hospital in Manchester, has
been designated and funded by the Department of Health to
provide a National Proton Radiotherapy service. Much physics
research, development and training will be needed to make
a success of this promising initiative. UCLH Radiotherapy
Physics and UCL Department of Medical Physics and
Bioengineering are already collaborating on several projects
that should come to fruition before the start of patient
treatments, expected in 2017. These projects range from
comparative studies of treatment planning systems for proton
beams, to development of proton radiography, to exploration
of in-vivo dosimetry based on detection of secondary particles
produced by proton interactions in the body and to the
extension of ART techniques to proton radiotherapy.
Image, page left: This figure illustrates the path of
the treatment beam around the patient. The patient
is immobilised with a thermoplastic mask while the
treatment is delivered
Image, top: A comparison of two treatment options
for this patient’s disease. The image on the right
demonstrates a plan with discrete beam angles while
the left shows a dynamic treatment distribution
Image, bottom right: A dose distribution for a rapid arc
plan showing the highly conformal high dose region in
red over the tumour
11
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Optical neuroimaging
of cognitive function in African infants
Authors: Maria Papadametriou and Clare Elwell
using a multichannel NIRS system designed and built by
Dr. Nick Everdell. The primary aim of the current study was
to field test this system and prepare the ground for a full-scale
longitudinal study of cognitive development in Gambian infants.
In February 2013 Prof Clare Elwell (Near Infrared
Spectroscopy group) and her team (Dr Maria
Papademetriou, UCL and Dr Sarah Lloyd-Fox,
Birkbeck University of London) went on a journey
to the rural Gambia to use a novel neuroimage
technique to investigate the effects of undernutrition
on brain development in African infants.
This innovative project idea was awarded a Grand Challenges
Exploration Phase 1 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation in collaboration with the MRC International
Nutrition Group from the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine. Poor nutrition is the primary health problem
plaguing developing countries and dietary insufficiency in
the first 1000 days of life can contribute to poor cognitive
development. If the specific impact of nutritional deficiencies
can be measured in the brain then it is possible that this
information can be used to inform and target a programme of
nutritional intervention in the developing world.
Existing neuroimaging technologies (e.g. MRI and EEG) fall
short of applicability in resource-poor settings or provide only
limited spatial localisation. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)
is a compact, non-invasive, easy-to-use and inexpensive
technique for measuring the changes in brain blood flow
associated with localised brain function. The NIRS group in
collaboration with Babylab at Birkbeck, have already performed
a range of cognitive development studies on infants in the UK
12
The studies took place in the MRC field station in the village
of Keneba, in a remote, rural area of Gambia. Transporting the
purpose build NIRS system across continents and through a
bumpy, unmade road was a challenge but the kit survived the
journey well. Field workers recruited infants for the study by
visiting the locals in their compounds and gaining consent from
both parents. The mothers and infants were then collected the
next day early in the morning by a Landrover and transported
to the field station. During the study the infants were sitting
on their mother’s lap facing a screen where the auditory and
visual stimuli were displayed sequentially. The visual stimuli
included human action (Gambian actors performing hand
and eye movements) and non-human motion (still pictures of
cars and helicopters). Similarly, the auditory stimuli included
human sounds (coughing, crying, laughing and yawning) and
environmental sounds (water running, and toys such as rattles).
After two weeks of field testing, data from a total of 42
Gambian infants, 4-8 months old, had been acquired.
Initial analysis revealed that the Gambian infants showed a
preferential response to the human (rather than non-human)
visual and auditory stimuli with activation clearly seen in the
temporal cortex. These observations are in agreement with
the studies in the UK infants. NIRS has proved a feasible
neuroimaging technology for this resource poor setting and
may well be a useful tool in assessing nutritional-specific
interventions. Plans are now in place to return to the Gambia
and collect more data to characterise longitudinal brain
development in a large cohort of infants and children.
Image, top left: A Gambian infant sitting on his mother’s
lap waiting for the study to begin. The infant is wearing the
custom made headgear accommodating the NIRS sources
and detectors. and he is facing towards the screen showing
the stimuli
13
Edge illumination X-Ray phase contrast imaging:
Nanoradian sensitivity at synchrotrons and
translation to conventional sources
Authors: Charlotte Hagen and Paul Diemoz
14
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Conventional x-ray techniques rely on the
variations of absorption within the imaged object
in order to derive contrast. Consequently, weakly
absorbing details are often invisible in x-ray images,
and features with similar absorption properties (like
soft biological tissues) can be hard to distinguish.
X-ray phase-contrast imaging (XPCi), instead, exploits a
different physical effect. Besides being absorbed, x-rays also
experience a slight deviation from their original path when
travelling through an object. The deviation angle is proportional
to the object thickness and to the gradient of its refractive
index. Since this can be up to a thousand times larger than the
absorption coefficient, a much improved detail visibility can be
achieved by exploiting this effect.
Several XPCi techniques have been developed. However,
due to the need for a highly coherent beam, their use is still,
with only few exceptions, restricted to synchrotron facilities.
A novel approach to XPCi, the so-called edge illumination
(EI) technique, has been under continuous development by
our group at UCL over recent years. The basic idea is to use
a narrow x-ray beam and to align it with the edge of a line of
detector pixels. When an object is introduced, the narrow beam
gets refracted either into or out of the detector pixels, causing
an increase or a decrease in the detected intensity. By scanning
the object through the narrow beam, an image is created, which
shows bright and dark fringes at the edges of all details inside
the imaged object. This edge enhancement effect strongly
increases the visibility of weakly absorbing features. Object
scanning can be avoided by multiplexing the EI principle
over the entire field of view with the use of appropriate masks
(“coded aperture” implementation of the EI method).
The EI XPCi technique was demonstrated to be insensitive
to beam polychromaticity and to work efficiently even with
source sizes up to 100 µm: it is thus fully compatible with the
use of conventional x-ray tubes and detectors, a very important
aspect as far as the translatability of XPCi into widespread
(e.g. clinical) applications is concerned. The EI setup is also
scalable and relatively insensitive to mechanical and thermal
instabilities. Two scanner prototypes have been built and are
currently in operation in the Radiation Physics laboratories
at UCL. They have already been used for the investigation of
several low absorbing samples (for which conventional x-ray
methods would provide little or no contrast), in different
fields including medicine, biology, materials science, cultural
heritage, homeland security, etc. Examples of applications are
the detection of tumours in breast tissue, the imaging of murine
cartilage samples, the analysis of cracks and defects in composite
materials. An example of an EI XPCi image taken with a
conventional setup can be seen opposite.
Recently, we also showed that, when used with highly spatially
coherent beams like those available at synchrotron radiation
facilities, the EI method can provide unprecedented angular
sensitivity. As an example, plastic filaments were imaged at a
very high X-ray energy (85 keV), where the absorption signal
is negligible. Not only are the filaments visible in the image
(see fig. above), but refraction angles of the order of a few
nanoradians can be resolved, which is at least one order
of magnitude better than values published for other XPCi
techniques (P.C. Diemoz et al, recently accepted for publication
in Physical Review Letters). This result means that, besides being
perfectly compatible with conventional sources, if used
at synchrotron facilities EI allows imaging samples with a
greatly increased sensitivity compared to existing techniques.
It is expected that this unprecedented sensitivity will enable
new, previously inaccessible applications in many scientific
areas of investigation.
Image, page left: Image of an onion flower taken with the
scanner prototype in the Radiation Physics laboratories
at UCL
Image, top: Extracted refraction angle images and profile
plot for three wire samples
15
Biomedical Ultrasound:
Imaging, Guidance and Therapy
Author: BEN COX
Ultrasound imaging is perhaps best known due to its
use for foetal scanning during pregnancy, but ultrasound
– both as a diagnostic as well as a therapeutic tool – is
already used in a much wider range of applications in
medicine, ranging from eye surgery to cancer therapy.
Furthermore, in recent years there has been widespread
recognition that non‐invasive and minimally‐invasive
surgery allows faster patient recovery, and are therefore
good both for patients’ health as well as hospital
budgets and waiting times. In this context, biomedical
ultrasound will have an increasingly crucial role,
both as a low cost and real-time imaging modality
(for guidance as well as diagnosis) and more recently
as a non‐invasive therapeutic (surgical) technique.
The Biomedical Ultrasound Group (www.ucl.ac.uk/medphys/
research/ultrasound) recently formed to provide a focus
for research involving ultrasonics and acoustics within the
Department of Medical Physics & Bioengineering. The aim
of the group is to undertake research that will extend what
is possible with ultrasound in medicine and the biomedical
sciences. Current projects range from the design of new
optical hydrophones technologies (an area pioneered by
Prof. Paul Beard), through the development of novel
modelling and software tools, to clinical applications.
For example, one project, led by Dr. Dean Barratt and shown
in the image below, involves the development of enabling
software-based technologies - in particular image registration
algorithms - that allow data from diagnostic or surgical planning
images (typically MRI or CT) which are available before a
procedure, to be aligned with ultrasound images that can be
obtained during the procedure to aid surgical navigation.
16
Much of the research at UCL in this field has focussed on
developing methods that employ three-dimensional (3D)
ultrasound imaging as a tool for surgical guidance. Applications
include neurosurgery for brain tumours, hip replacement
surgery, and more recently, minimally-invasive procedures
for the diagnosis and treatment of prostate and liver cancer,
including high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy.
Several aspects of, and applications related to, high-intensity
focused ultrasound therapy (HIFU) are being actively
researched both within the UK and internationally. One
application of HIFU is to use intense bursts of tightly
focussed ultrasound to heat tissue to necrosis. By guiding
the ultrasound focus appropriately, it can be used to ablate
diseased tissue. It is therefore a non-invasive way of treating
conditions, such as tumours in the brain or other organs,
which would otherwise require risky and time consuming
surgery. Being able to predict accurately where the sound will
go and what it is going to do when transmitted into the body
is clearly important when planning HIFU surgery, especially
close to critical structures such as nerves or blood vessels. The
development of large scale tissue-realistic acoustic models
that can accurately predict the acoustic field, and so help with
treatment planning and dosimetry, has been one outcome of
the numerical modelling work of Drs Bradley Treeby and Ben
Cox (www.k-wave.org), illustrated in the image on page 17.
Image, below: a) A 3D MRI-derived model of the prostate
registered to transrectal ultrasound images. b) A slice view
of the original MR image with the tumour and prostate
boundaries indicated. c) The corresponding ultrasound slice
view. The arrows indicate the locations of small cysts, which
indicate a good alignment following image registration
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Image, above: A 2D slice through a 3D simulation of high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment of
the kidney. The acoustic properties of the tissue are estimated from X-ray CT images of the patient. The acoustic
(ultrasonic) waves are modelled using k-Wave (www.k-wave.org), a toolbox designed for tissue-realistic simulations
of the propagation of ultrasound waves for biomedical applications. The toolbox was written and developed in the
Medical Physics and Bioengineering Department at UCL and at the Australian National University in Canberra
17
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Getting the message out:
The Continence Product Advisor website
Authors: Margaret Macaulay, Sabrina Falloon, Mihaela Soric, Tal Hart
and Alan Cottenden
Millions of people worldwide suffer from incontinence,
the involuntary leakage of urine or faeces, relying on
containment products to manage their symptoms and
enable them to have a full and active life. There are
many products available; the most commonly used are
absorbent pads but male and female devices, catheters
and accessories, and toileting aids are also widely used.
However, people find talking about their incontinence
difficult and are often unaware of the wide range of
products available to them and how to select and
use them effectively.
The Continence & Skin Technology Group has developed an
international programme of work over the last 30 years based
on the need to understand and address the most important
issues for incontinent people, caregivers and manufacturers
of products. Specifically this has focused on:
• Development and refinement of products which are
effective at containing leakage and are acceptable to
product users, using multiple approaches including
mathematical modelling, laboratory experimentation
and clinical (user) testing.
• Ensuring that all parties with an interest in continence
product technology have access to the best evidence-based
information, to enable appropriate product selection and
maximum effectiveness.
Until now, research evidence underpinning the selection and
use of continence products has been confined to book form.
Every four years all evidence relating to continence products is
reviewed and updated in ‘Incontinence’ (eds: Abrams, Cardozo,
Wein and Khoury). Over the last 18 months, CSTG staff,
together with a sister group from the University of Southampton
and the IT department of the International Continence Society,
have developed a new website based on the information in
Chapter 20 ‘Management using continence products’.
The Continence Product Advisor website
(http://www.continenceproductadvisor.org/, to be
launched in summer 2013) is an international site providing
generic, impartial, non-commercial and evidence-based
information for product users, their caregivers and others who
need to know about incontinence products. Visitors to the
site are guided to relevant information either based on their
symptoms, physical characteristics, lifestyle and preferences
or directly to specific products. The website does not provide
information specific to national health care systems or particular
brands. Visitors are guided to their own national organisations
for local help. It is anticipated that this fledgling site may in
the future be translated into other languages in order to reach
a greater number of people. Early feedback from product users
and health care professionals has been very positive.
There are some who are unlikely to have access to such
information: people living in nursing homes are a group
for whom incontinence is a particular problem. They are
usually elderly and frail, and around 70% experience urinary
incontinence requiring the use of absorbent pads (pads); leakage
is often ‘heavy ‘requiring the use of large pads or diapers. Some
incontinent people are unaware that they have passed urine and
therefore may sit in a wet pad for several hours before the pad
is replaced. It is therefore important to develop pads which are
kind to the skin and highly absorbent, and to develop methods
to alert patients and their carers to the presence of urine in pads.
Our current research covers each of these aspects individually,
with PhD projects on:
• frictional interaction between the skin and top sheet of
the pad (made from a nonwoven fabric), leading to their
eventual improvement and the reduction in skin damage
• the value of superabsorbent polymers in pads, correlating
properties such as swelling kinetics, porosity and
permeability with absorption performance, and
• the design and placement of sensors in diapers to maximize
their accuracy, according to the posture of the patient,
where the urine lands in the diaper, etc.
It is hoped that this research will one day lead to products that
are better at meeting the needs of people such as those seeking
help from the Continence Product Advisor website.
18
Graduate success!
We were delighted that our two most recent PhD graduates
have both gone on to work in medical technology related
fields; Dr. David Cottenden to Medical Devices group,
The Technology Partnership Ltd, near Cambridge, and
Dr. Raquel Santamarta to Kimberley Clark in Spain.
Image, above: Enhanced optical micrograph of a nonwoven
fabric used next to the skin in incontinence pads. The
constituent polypropylene fibres are 15µm in diameter
Conferences
The Continence and Skin Technology Group helps
to organise two biennial conferences which aim to
provide a ‘state of the art’ update for people interested
in continence technology, and to bring together people
from different disciplines to find innovative solutions to
the difficulties of effectively managing incontinence and
dealing with associated difficulties. The first is ‘Innovating
for Continence: The Engineering Challenge IV’ – the
most recent of these was held in Chicago in April 2013;
they are run jointly with the Simon Foundation for
Continence (US). All members of the CSTG presented
their work. The second is ‘Incontinence: The Engineering
Challenge IX’, which will take place at the Institute of
Mechanical Engineering (London) in November 2013.
19
Mapping tissue magnetic susceptibility
with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Author: Karin Shmueli
What is tissue magnetic susceptibility and why is it
useful? Magnetic susceptibility is the physical property
of a tissue that determines how easily and strongly
it can be magnetised by the very high magnetic field
found inside an MRI scanner and the direction of this
magnetisation relative to the applied field. Through
most of MRI’s roughly 30-year history, susceptibility
has usually been associated with the word “artifacts”
because the difference in the susceptibility of tissue
relative to air and bone (e.g. around the air-filled
sinuses in the head) leads to image artifacts such
as geometric distortion and signal drop-out.
My research focuses on turning to our advantage susceptibilityrelated effects that used to be thought of as a nuisance, to
provide an exciting new source of tissue contrast in MRI.
Tissue regions with different magnetic susceptibilities change
the magnetic field around them. Using MRI, we can measure
these local magnetic fields using a sequence of radio-frequency
and magnetic field gradient pulses known as a gradient-echo
sequence. The local magnetic field is directly proportional to
the phase of the complex MRI signal we detect. However,
conventional MRI only uses the magnitude of the signal
to form images and the valuable phase information is often
discarded. Now we are looking closely at these phase images
as they are complementary to the standard magnitude images
and also have a higher contrast-to-noise ratio, resulting in
dramatic improvements in visualisation of human and animal
brain anatomy, particularly at high magnetic field strengths.
Unfortunately, phase images do have some drawbacks: their
contrast varies depending on the orientation of the tissues
relative to the direction of the scanner’s main magnetic field and
is also non-local, spreading out around any areas of different
magnetic susceptibility. To overcome these problems, I have
developed techniques to calculate maps of the underlying
susceptibility from MRI phase images. These tissue magnetic
susceptibility maps overcome the orientation-dependent and
non-local contrast found in phase images and more closely
represent tissue composition. This is illustrated by the iron-rich
deep-bran structures that stand out brightly in the susceptibility
maps in the figure but are not visible in the magnitude image.
20
Susceptibility mapping is a rapidly growing research area and
new methods for calculating susceptibility maps from phase
images are constantly emerging. So what are the applications of
this exciting new technique? Susceptibility maps are uniquely
sensitive to changes in both the tissue iron content as well
as the amount of myelin (the fatty sheath encasing nerve
fibres). This means they are very well suited to investigating a
variety of neurological diseases associated with accumulation
of iron (including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases)
and loss of myelin (such as Multiple Sclerosis) in different
brain regions. I have shown that susceptibility mapping can
be used to improve the localisation of target structures for
neurosurgical techniques such as deep-brain stimulation.
As well as revealing brain structure, susceptibility mapping
has just started to be used to investigate brain function in
functional MRI (fMRI) studies. These were performed at
the high magnetic field strength of 7 Tesla and offer the
advantage of detecting dynamic changes in blood-oxygenation
that accompany brain activity much more directly than
in conventional magnitude-based fMRI. Adam Tyson,
an MSci student in my group, has just finished a project
testing the feasibility of functional susceptibility mapping
at the clinical MRI field strength of 3 Tesla. Moving
beyond the brain, my PhD student, Eoin Finnerty, is
working to translate susceptibility mapping techniques
into the body to reveal the health of other vital organs.
He will work to overcome the challenges of acquiring useful
phase images in the presence of respiratory motion and
large magnetic field non-uniformities found in the body.
Magnetic susceptibility is an intrinsic tissue property, so
susceptibility maps are easier to interpret than phase images,
and have the potential to reveal fine-scale pathology, leading
to earlier diagnosis and providing useful clinical biomarkers.
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Image, below: MRI Susceptibility Mapping Reveals Iron-Rich Deep-Brain Structures.
Iron-rich deep-brain structures that do not appear in the standard magnitude MR image are clearly visible in the
phase image. In the phase image the contrast around the red nuclei (upper arrow) and substantia nigra (lower
arrow) varies with direction and spreads outside these structures whereas the locally increased susceptibility
inside these structures is clearly visible in the susceptibility map (arrows). These images of a healthy human
volunteer were acquired on one of UCL’s 3 Tesla Siemens MRI systems using standard gradient-echo MRI
21
Selected grants 2012–13
22
Sponsor
Project Title
Total award
Investigator
European Commission
National Physics Laboratory
Multi-scale modelling of ultrasound heating effects in bone
€140,803
Dr. Bradley Treeby
EPSRC
Optimising Magnetic Susceptibility Mapping to Enhance
MRI of Microbubbles
£124,354
Dr. Karin Shmueli
EPSRC
Medical Imaging Markers of Cancer Initiation
£1,016,717
Prof. David Hawkes
European Research Council
F/SHIP: MOPHIM: Molecular photoacoustic
imaging during ultrasound-guided interventions
€ 1,499,331
Dr. Adrien Desjardins
EPSRC
Multimodal neuroimaging: novel engineering solutions
for clinical applications and assistive technologies
£1,233,939
Prof. Clare Elwell
EPSRC
Wafer Bonder
£242,473
Prof. Nick Donaldson
EPSRC
Exploiting the unique quantitative capabilities
offered by simultaneous PET/MRI
£614,839
Prof. Seb Ourselin
EPSRC
Dynamic High Resolution Photoacoustic Tomography system
£499,965
Dr. Ben Cox
European Research Council
FP7: FAMOS: Functional anatomical molecular
optical screening
€ 692,796
Prof. Paul Beard
MRC
Early thrombolytic intervention in acute stroke by
imaging with Electrical Impedance tomography
£992,367
Prof. David Holder
The Wellcome Trust /
Department of Health
Smart Laparoscopic Liver Resection: Integrated Image
Guidance and Tissue Discrimination
£1,069,149
Prof. David Hawkes
The Inspire Foundation
Development and testing of an ergometer for an experiment
in functional recovery
£14,095
Prof. Nick Donaldson
EPSRC
Fast optical tomography for imaging seizure activity
in newborn infants
£1,077,710
Prof. Jem Hebden
The Wellcome Trust /
Department of Health
Novel Multimodality Imaging Techniques for Neurosurgical
Planning and Stereotactic Navigation in Epilepsy Surgery
£455,294
Prof. Seb Ourselin
The Wellcome Trust /
Department of Health
SmartTarget: Image-guided Diagnosis and Treatment
of Localised Prostate Cancer
£757,038
Dr. Dean Barratt
NIHR
Ketamine augmentation of electroconvulsive therapy to
improve outcomes in depression
£49,073
Prof. Clare Elwell
The Royal Society
High-Speed Near-infrared spectroscopy with Hadamard
Matrix Encoding
£74,595
Dr. Adrien Desjardins
Action Medical Research
Improved detection of seizure activity in the neonatal
and infant brain.
£131,150
Prof. Jem Hebden
EPSRC
Computational Models of neurodegenerative
disease progression models
£287,819
Prof. Seb Ourselin
EPSRC
Development and Application of Fibre-Laser Based
Excitation Sources for Biomedical Photoacoustic Imaging
£391,810
Prof. Paul Beard
NIKON
X-Ray Phase Contrast Imaging
£48,563
Prof. Robert Speller /
Dr. Alessandro Olivo
MRC
EPICure@19- the extremely preterm young adult
£191,214
Prof. Seb Ourselin
Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation
Novel Biomarkers of Nutrition Related
Cognitive Development
$100,000
Prof. Clare Elwell
EPSRC
Optical and Acoustic Imaging for
Interventional Device Guidance
£125,000
Dr. Adrien Desjardins
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
PhD award successes
Baptiste Allain (28/01/2012)
Re-localisation of microscopic lesions in their macroscopic
context for surgical instrument guidance.
Aaron Oliver-Taylor (28/01/2013)
Parallel transmission methods for arterial spin labelling
magnetic resonance imaging.
Elke Brauer-Krisch (28/06/2012)
Experimental dosimetry for Microbeam Radiation Therapy.
Kate Ricketts (28/03/2012)
Nanoparticles for tumour diagnostics.
Adrienne Campbell-Washburn (28/12/2012)
Development of MRI methods forexperimental disease models.
Raquel Santamarta Vilela (28/01/2012)
Development of a washable, nonwoven-based absorbent
product from incontinent women.
Kylie De Jager (28/12/2012)
Knee extension with less hip flexion: biomechanical and
evoked EMG analysis during selective surface stimulation
of the quadriceps.
Magdalena Szafraniec (28/02/2013)
Coded Aperture Phase Contrast Tomosynthesis.
Juan Fritschy (28/04/2012)
Automatic detection of EEG patterns using machine
learning techniques.
Sangeeta Kumari Maini (28/09/2012)
Development of a Breast Tissue Diffraction Analysis System
using Energy Dispersive X-ray Diffraction.
Manuel Machado Cardoso (28/11/2012)
Automated Morphometric Characterization of the Cerebral
Cortex for the Developing and Ageing Brain.
Thomy Mertzanidou (28/09/2012)
Automatic correspondence between 2D and 3D images
of the breast.
Marc Modat (28/02/2012)
Efficient dense non-rigid registration using the
free-form deformation framework.
23
UCL Medical Physics and Bioengineering | Newsletter 2013
Prizes
AwardS
SET for Britain
We held our annual student award ceremony on 28 November
2012. Prof John Clifton, our Head of Department from
1962–1992, was again willing to present the undergraduate
prize named in his honour. We were also delighted when Prof
Clifton later informed us that he wished to permanently endow
the prize via a very generous gift.
Many congratulations to Joanna Brunker who also received
the gold medal at the highly prestigious “SET for Britain”
competition, held at the House of Commons on 18 March 2013.
The event provides an opportunity for Britain’s most promising
scientists and engineers to present their work to MPs. Joanna
received the award for her research involving the development
of photoacoustic imaging (see page 6) which has the potential to
improve our understanding and treatment of tumours.
This year we introduced a new award for the PhD student who,
in the opinion of our panel of judges, submitted the best paper
to a scientific journal during the preceding twelve months.
The winner of our inaugural PhD student prize was Joanna
Brunker, for her paper: Joanna Brunker and Paul Beard,
“Pulsed photoacoustic Doppler flowmetry using time-domain
cross-correlation: accuracy, resolution and scalability,” J. Acoust.
Soc. Am. 132, 1780-1791 (2012).
Suffrage Science
The work of Professor Clare Elwell was recognised at the
Medical Research Council’s 2013 Suffrage Science Event, which
annually honours 12 leading female scientists in the fields of
engineering and the physical sciences, as applied to medicine.
WINNERS
Focus on the Positive
Marta Caballero – John Clifton Prize for most outstanding
performance by a non-final-year undergraduate.
Mathew Elameer – Sidney Russ Prize for the most outstanding
performance by a final-year undergraduate.
Edwina Peck – Joseph Rotblat Prize for the most outstanding
performance by an MSc student.
Richard Pearse – IPEM Prize for the best MSc project.
Joanna Brunker – PhD Student Prize for the most
outstanding publication.
We have had two winners of UCL’s Focus on the Positive event,
run by the UCL Public Engagement Unit. UCL researchers
pitch an idea to an audience of 120 people, who then vote to
decide which idea they want to support. Gibril Kallon (a third
year undergraduate) proposed a project to develop a simple
system using ultraviolet light to detect carcinogenic toxins in
crops for use by in farming communities in Sierra Leone.
Kate Ricketts (a post-doctoral researcher) won funding for a
network for UK radiotherapy professionals to support and train
colleagues in Ghana and elsewhere in Western Africa.
Athena SWAN Bronze Award
The department has recently been awarded an Athena
SWAN Bronze Award in recognition of our on-going
commitment to promoting good practice in the recruitment
and retention of female staff and students at all levels.
24
Gallery
A selection of images taken in the department. Copyright © Matt Clayton/ UCL Communications 2013.
Newsletter design and photography (inside front cover and page 1) Copyright © UCL Creative Media Services 2013.
ConTACTS
Department of Medical Physics & Bioengineering
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/medphys
Tel: 020 7679 0200
Email: medphys.newsletter@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @UCLMedphys