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Annual Review
2010/11
10
The Imaging
Research Cluster
T
he past two centuries have seen successive
revolutions in how we visualise and understand
the ways in which illnesses begin and progress in the
human body. These range from staining biological
samples with dyes in the 19th century, to the
development of microscopy and X-rays in the 20th, to
techniques such as MRI scanning today. The Imaging
Cluster is at the forefront of extending this tradition. It
comprises a collaboration between chemists, engineers,
philosophers and medical scientists, built around
Fellows of Keble and their associated “subject families”
with an interest in exploring how the body and mind
work. The aim is to produce improved and more readily
interpretable real-time imaging of processes that occur
in humans and animals at macro, cellular and molecular
levels. This will provide new windows into the way the
body works in illness and in health.
The cluster first formed in 2009. Members of the group
highlight the benefits of being Keble Fellows and the role of
the College in their collaboration and their ongoing work: “We
know each other, take meals and attend College and social
events together. These informal and haphazard opportunities
to chat about the successes and problems of our work,
brought to a focus in termly workshops and other interactions
strongly supported by the College, encourage a relaxed
atmosphere of mutual help and brainstorming”, says Cluster
member Dr Simon Hunt.
Blood and
beyond
Participants self-associate
into a cluster, with each
working in a different, though
complementary, area.
Dr Stephen Payne, Tutorial Fellow
in Engineering, is interested in
blood and its flow
. Blockages in
our bloodstream can have serious
consequences. For example, a
disturbance of the blood supply into the brain causes a stroke that can range
from being virtually unnoticeable to fatal in its effects. Dr Payne and his research
group apply biomedical engineering and imaging techniques in collaboration
with the Cluster to study how the body controls blood flow, and the causes of
blockages. Another function of the blood is to help distribute the heat within our
bodies, and Dr Payne studies this to refine the treatment of cancer by focussed
thermal ablation. Ablation is a procedure where cancer tissue can be killed
simply by heating it. The major blood vessels surrounding the tissue affect the
treatment because they dissipate the heat, and as result, it is very hard to tell
exactly which tissue will be destroyed. The models of blood flow Dr Payne and
his group have devised predict the outcome of ablation treatment with much
greater accuracy. See
Red: Actual ablated liver tissue
Blue: Predicted ablated tissue
Grey: Major blood vessels
Image: Stephen Payne
Blood contains both red cells - erythrocytes - and white
cells - leukocytes. B and T lymphocyte cells are two kinds
of leukocyte whose principal job is to make proteins,
including
antibodies
(from B cells) or
cytokines
(from T
cells) that fight
diseases
caused by pathogenic viruses,
bacteria or parasites. Antibodies and cytokines form after
a few hours or days after a pathogen arrives, but right at
the start - in the first few minutes - the outer membrane
of B and T cells detect the threat and alert the nucleus
to activate the correct genes. Calcium ions within the
cell act as one of the messengers, encoding a signal
meaningful to the nucleus. Immunology Fellow Dr Simon
Hunt and his co-workers use their unique fluorescence-
based cell imager, developed with Dr Payne, to snoop on
the fluctuations in calcium ions in thousands of individual
lymphocytes simultaneously and thus try to decode
the signals to predict the future outcome. They can
characterise populations of lymphocytes according to
their calcium fluorescence patterns, to better understand
if and when antibodies and cytokines will be made in the
struggle by the immune system against pathogenic foes.
See
When lymphocytes
fight pathogenic foes
“Imaging is our topic because its scope
runs all the way from the technical
wizardry of the “hard” sciences (chemistry,
physics, biosciences) to the models and
pattern recognition of information
engineering and ultimately to the
philosophy of perception”.
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