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[Music]

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Hello and welcome to another interview in medical physics here at the German Cancer Research Center.

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We are here on the second floor of the building Imaging and Radiation Oncology and on this floor

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mainly the researchers and students have their offices. In this video we are going to meet Vanessa,

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she is a postdoctoral researcher here at the German Cancer Research Center. So, let's meet her. [Music]

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Hello Vanessa. Hi! Thanks for your time nice. Hi nice to meet you

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I've just mentioned that you are a postdoctoral researcher here at the DKFZ maybe you could just tell us

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a bit more about your background what you study for example. I studied physics here at

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University of Heidberg, Bachelors and Masters, and then I came already for my Bachelor's thesis

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to the dkfz and I came back for the Masters and came back for my PhD studies and now I'm

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a postdoctoral researcher. Since you are a postdoctoral researcher maybe you could

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tell us or explain us the term what does a postdoctoral researcher really do here at the

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DKFZ. So, a postdoctoral researcher, post-doc is just a short version for postdoctoral researcher, as you

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said, and just means that you are after your PhD so you have already completed your um doctoral

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studies. In my case I finished in the beginning of 2023 and I'm now in my second postor year. 

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Maybe you could tell us a bit more about your research field. So I'm working in the

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Division of Medical Physics in Radiology which is led by Professor Mark Ladd and you might have already

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heard from him that in our department it's all about different modalities for medical imaging,

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especially magnetic resonance imaging and my work focuses on a technique which is

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called phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging or short 31P MRSI and in a conventional MRI

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you might know that we can um acquire images of the human body without ionizing radiation

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so without any harm for the body by measuring the resonance signal of the water molecules in

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the body and because the water molecules send different signals depending on where they are

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we can afterwards reconstruct an image showing us where there's bone where there's soft tissue

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and so on so we end up with images like shown here, very small in this poster, there's bone

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there's soft tissue of the brain and we can even see here the tumor because this was a

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scan of a cancer patient so now the difference of phosphorus MRSI to conventional MRI is that

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we are not measuring the signal from water but from biological compounds containing the element

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phosphorus and by doing this we can get different information from the scans so we can for example

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measure the molecule ATP which is the energy carrier of the body and this opens us the

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window to investigate the energy metabolism which is also of great interest for cancer

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research because in cancer the energy metabolism is changed compared to the healthy tissue.

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Another example what we can do with um 31p MRSI is the imaging of pH. This is shown here. So we can process

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the signals we are acquiring in a certain way to end up with the pH value in each pixel of the

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image so we can overlay it with the anatomy and we can see where the pH value is um how high in

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every pixel and in this case this was also from a cancer patient showing us clearly that in some

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parts of the tumor the pH is elevated compared to healthy. Okay so to sum it up a bit you get more

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information with your new method compared to a normal MRI? Yeah, it always goes together, so it

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will always be the conventional MRI measurements to get the anatomy because we can't beat the spatial

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resolution but what we are trying is to just get more information 

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about the chemistry or the biochemistry behind it. So with parameters like the pH

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value or the magnesium ion concentration we can also map. That sounds

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very interesting but why I have never heard about it? Yeah, so I guess the reason for this is because

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phosphorus MRSI is not in a clinical routine and this is mainly because the measurement times

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are too long, so for those scans over here it took almost an hour for

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getting this pH map for example. This can't be feasible for the clinic so it's way too

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long. So the main focus of my field of research is definitely in accelerating the technique so

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making the measurement faster and in my opinion it's very important to have the experience of 

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older scientists being in the field for a while but very important also to get new people to

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the field with new innovative ideas so that we can hopefully get the clinical translation soon. 

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Having the last months and years of research in mind what was the most fascinating part for you?

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Do we have any event or anything else that was very fascinating to you? So my highlight every

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year is of course the International Conference IRMRM where scientists in the Mr Imaging 

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research field are meeting for a week to present their work and discuss about the work

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and also found new collaborations. This is always a great event it's very exhausting for

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sure because you have a tight schedule and a lot of input the whole week, but it's also a lot

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of fun to spend time with your colleagues and also meet your collaboration partners in person.

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So this is every year one of my highlights, definitely, and especially this year 2024 I'm also

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looking forward to my upcoming shortterm research stay okay at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in

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Boston which is actually starting in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking

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forward to starting this now. So you see being in medical physics research is always nice to work

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together with people from all over the world and it's always giving you the opportunity to stay

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some time abroad yourself if you want that. Do you have any advice for young students who just

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finished school or just started to study Physics, why should they consider medical physics for

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their study? Do we have any advice, a personal one? So what I like the most about being in

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the field of medical physics is the fact that it's so interdisciplinary. So you're not working with

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people from physics only but from people uh with people from chemistry, medicine or computational

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sciences, and this means it's every day very interesting and you learn always something

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new also from other fields so not only from your field of study but it's all very interdisciplinary.

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So for young students who are very interested in multiple fields not only one and like a bit

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of variation in their work I think medical physics could be a very good choice. [Music]