BMPI congratulates Sanne, MSc and Stefan, MSc

December 7th, 2012 - Last month, two master students from our group graduated! BMPI congratulates Sanne Slegers and Stefan Sandker with obtaining the title of Master of Science (MSc).

On November 23rd, Sanne Slegers (biomedical engineering) successfully defended her research regarding photoacoustic imaging of cell growth in scaffolds. This research was performed in collaboration with the Developmental Bioengineering group and has as final aim to monitor the cell-growth of Islands of Langerhans in scaffolds that are developed for implantation in patients with diabetes.

Sanne showed that photoacoustics can indeed visualize the cells in the scaffolds when they are fixated. Moreover, the intensity of the signal was increasing with the increase in the number of cells. Sanne and her colleagues made also first step to truly monitore the growth of living cells in the scaffold.

Sannes work was graded with an 8! Sanne is continuing her career as a medical physicist trainee (klinisch fysicus in opleiding).

For more information about Sanne’s project, please contact Dr. Srirang Manohar (s.manohar@utwente.nl).

On December 4th, Stefan Sandker (technical medicine) defended his research on the use of the radial artery for cardiac bypass surgery. Stefan performed his graduation assignment at the department of cardiovascular surgery of the Medisch Spectrum Twente hospital. His project was divided into two parts, one being partly performed at the University Medical Center in Groningen (UMCG) (on the influence of dissecting the adventitial layer of the artery on the amount of vasoconstriction) and one being partly performed at BMPI. In the BMPI part of the project, BMPI’s LASCA (Laser Speckle Contrast Analysis) system was used in a feasibility study on patients. The final aim is to have an objective method to see if the vascular anatomy of the hand is such that the radial artery can be resected for use as cardiac bypass. Stefans work was graded with a 9! Stefan will continue his work on radial artery bypass grafting as a PhD student.

For more information about the LASCA part of the project, please contact Prof. Wiendelt Steenbergen (w.steenbergen@utwente.nl)