Journal Notes
Week 1
Day 1 – Monday, June 23, 2003
Today was my first day at the University of Washington. Although it was initially difficult to find, I met with my mentor, Linda Shapiro at her office in Sieg Hall. I got the keys to my office, and then sat down to talk to her about the project that I will be working on. The project that I will work on is the Reconstruction of Blood Vessel Trees from Visible Human Data. This is a project that Zhenrong Qian had worked on, but never fully completed. We briefly reviewed a power point slide highlighting the goal: to reconstruct the blood vessels of the lungs from Visible Human Data. Hopefully I will be able to get the program that Zhenrong created to work, to test the program out on the other lung, and possibly to extend the program to work on other organs of the body.
What I will do today is read over the paper submitted by Zhenrong, outlining the project, so that I can get a better understanding of the major goals and techniques used in trying to achieve them. I will also review a low-level segmentation flow chart of the program that was created. Furthermore, I will read a research paper submitted by Lisa Torrey, a summer student from last year, which summarizes two different projects that she had worked on.
Day 2 – Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Getting around campus today was a lot simpler than it was yesterday. I arrived around 9:00 a.m. and went directly to my office. I completed reading the paper detailing the how the reconstruction of blood vessels in the lung was to be done. Although I understood the main concepts, there are areas of the project that I do not quite understand because I do not have knowledge about all the different concepts that were discussed. One of my goals today is to look up some of the background information that was presented - for example, the relation of the project to the Foundational Model of Anatomy, and what the goals of the FMA are – so that I can better understand the goals of this project and the future applications of it. I was also able to get a hold of the code for the program that Zhenrong had created. I am going to try to get familiar with the code so that I can get it to work again.
Day 3 – Wednesday, June 25, 2003
I am starting to get into a regular routine here in Seattle. I came in early this morning and gathered some ideas for a website I will have to create as part of the DMP program. I once again quickly reviewed Zhenrong’s paper to get an overall idea of how the program should run. At about 11:00 a.m. I left with Linda to meet with one of her Ph.D. students, Raven. What was being discussed was a paper that is to be submitted titled, “An Approach to the Anatomical Correlation of Species through the Foundational Model of Anatomy.” This paper outlines the authors’ intent, “to develop a computational model that can map that anatomical entities of one species to those of another and determine similarities and differences represented in the frames of these anatomical entities in the FMA” (Travillian , Rosse, Shapiro, 2). Following this meeting, we attended the brain meeting that was being held by Jim. The intent of this meeting was for Jim to be able to get updates from the students that are currently working on projects that are related to the brain. Although some of the information was difficult to understand due to a lack of knowledge about the programs they are creating, there is one that I found particularly interesting; this is a program that was created by a kid named Shawn. Shawn's program is interactive and handles any organ, creating a mesh model, which in a way is similar to the one that I will be working on accept that it only works on blood vessels. Following this meeting, I returned to my office and will now continue to read about the project before I leave to move into my apartment.
Day 4 – Thursday, June 26, 2003
I received a copy of the power point slides on the project dealing with the reconstruction of blood vessels in the lung to review. It may be a possibility that we may combine both Zhenrong’s and Shawn’s programs to form a new and improved one. However, this is just an idea for now. I will also have to review the literature that goes along with Shawn’s project to get an idea of how it works. Currently, I am working on understanding the coding done by Zhenrong.
Day 5 – Friday, June 27, 2003
I have gotten through my first week at the University of Washington! Each day I have been exploring the campus a little further, and I am getting to know my way around pretty well. By the end of this program, I should have a website completed. I worked on this website for couple hours this morning. Now I will continue to read through Shawn’s thesis and look over some of Zhenrong’s code. Hopefully, I will be able to meet with Zhenrong soon, so that I will then be able to get a better understanding of her program and begin to get it running again.