Visit to Karolinska Hospital

Today, we had a study trip at Karolinska Hospital which is supposedly near Vastra Skogen. We missed the bus, and thought it waas possible to walk there, cos Jiakai tells us he walks to his school, Karolinska Institute everyday. Then we found out it takes 30 minutes to walk there, Eekks! Jiakai, I really pei fu ni. But yeah, Qiang and I decided to just bum around for the next bus, leading to us poking around this sculture.




This is just some sculpture outside the Vastra Skogen station. If you look around, it's a residential district. That's why I thought these were actually real, comfy pillows for people to lounge around or pillows taken out to sun.

Most of the pillows even have creases in strategic places to make like the real thing.

Okay, so after some time, the bus finally came and by the time we reached the MR centre in Karolinska Hospital, the seminar about Magnetic Resoncance has started. Well, the lecturer turned out to be this rather young and funky Canadian, who went through the lecture rather quickly. It's quite amusing, because he mentions that he is rushing to make his concert at 3pm. Yeah.. Lecturer going to give a rock concert at 3pm.. Yeah.. so he goes like.. "Yeah, i think you should know this, and this and this" and rattles on. And he tries to show us some super positioning of waves on the whiteboard, and he makes funny wave-like motions with his left and right arm and brings them closer together. And when his two hands meet, he suddenly does this little twirl and swirl and tada! yeah.. so now you understand what i'm saying? Whhhatt?!??! Hello, your dance is really amusing, but doing a little dance with your arms doesn't make your illustrations any clearer.. ^-^ oh watever... I begin thinking of what I want to cook for dinner, because I need to finish off the groceries back home. Plans for dinner turn out to be Chicken Stew and Tofu with minced meat.

CT Lab

Today we had our lab for our course Radiation Detectors and Imaging Systems. It's quite fun cos we got to do a full CT (Computer Tomography) scan on poor Barbie. Basically, for the sake of scientific pursuit, Barbie was inserted with a metal ball bearing somewhere in her torso. We were supposed to locate the location of the "patient's tumour" using the CT scan. This time, I was very diligent in taking notes, so that I'd know what to write for the report.. Sigh.. It's very slack though.. U're supposed to hand in the report 2 weeks after lab, when the report is kind of short anyway.

Okay, so you have a source, Am-241, at one side emitting photons. We select one low and one high energy range of the photons to observe. At the other end, you have a detector that will allow you to know how much photons are absorbed or passed through. The metal ball-bearing would absorb more photons and lead to a lower amt of photons being detected at the end. It's pretty automated, the machine simlpy rotates every 6 degrees for 180 degrees at each position along her torso, and then repeats it another 5mm down her torso. First we conduct CT slicing to approximate the positiona and then conduct a full CT scan. Then once the machine is in working, we go for a 45 minutes coffee break.. Unbelievable...
Patient Barbie undergoing CT scan.

When we are back, the machine has been kind enough to give us the following results.


Tumour found near Barbie's left back. Blue area due to higher absorption of photons. In this case, the result is more apparent using the higher energy photons.