Journal Notes

Week 2

Day 6 – Monday, June 30, 2003

         It is the beginning of my second week. I spent my day going through and taking notes on Shawn’s Thesis. I was able to contact Zhenrong, and we will hopefully be meeting after the fourth of July to discuss her program. In the afternoon, I attended a presentation that was intended for the interns at Microsoft. The presentation highlighted several research projects that are being conducted at the University of Washington, along with providing information about the graduate program at this University. The two individual presentations that I attended were the one related to graphics and animation and the one dealing with data management, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Both of these talks were of interest to me. One of the interesting research projects discussed in the second presentation dealt with imitation learning in humans and robotics, the goal being to use this imitation to program robots to do such things as taking out the trash, and so on. Hearing these presentations gave me insight into the wide variety of research areas available at the University of Washington.


Day 7 – Tuesday, July 1, 2003

         Today, I met with several of the other research assistants who are working with Wanda Pratt and A.J. Bernheim Brush for lunch near Parrington. I was also able to meet with some of C. S. graduate students at the University of Washington. Until I meet with Zhenrong, I will work on a literature search for articles in biomedical journals that are related to Zhenrong’s work. I also will be reading through some information on EM segmentation and preparing any questions on Shawn’s project so that I can present them at the SIRS (Structural Informatics Research Seminar) meeting tomorrow afternoon.


Day 8 – Wednesday, July 2, 2003

         I started off the day continuing to go over and take notes on Shawn’s thesis. In the afternoon I attended my first SIRS (Structural Informatics Research Seminar) meeting, which contains the same people that attended the brain meeting plus a few others. The topic of discussion today was how to further evaluate different systems so as to satisfy the reviewers. How to evaluate Raven’s methodology for comparing species was the main focus of this meeting. Following this meeting, Linda and I were able to find the location of the Visible Human Data that was used by Zhenrong. I was able to get access to them through my machine. Now, I need to see if I can find useful ones that are consecutive or close to consecutive slices so that I can use them to test out the program. Also, I will have to contact Zhenrong so that I can tell her that I need to restore the images from the original set because most of them were not saved when she had left. In addition, I need to ask her where the actual EM segmentation code is. Tonight, I will review EM segmentation and try to organize articles that I have printed for the literature search applying to both Zhenrong’s project and Shawn’s project.


Day 9 – Thursday, July 3, 2003

         I started off my day looking through images from the Visible Human Data. I have not yet looked at the complete set, but rather a set of images that Zhenrong had saved. Following this I took a look at her code to see if I could find the EM algorithm code that she used because Veronica (from the SIRS meeting) had been looking for it. I have not yet been able to find it. Later in the afternoon I was able to talk to Jocelyn and another student, Viet, about the projects that they are working on, what they are interested in doing in the future, and there overall experience so far. For the remainder of the day, I plan on working on the literature search.


Day 10 – Friday, July 4, 2003

         Day off: Fourth of July!!!!