Deborah Brown
Maplewood Comprehensive High School
Chemistry I, AP Chemistry

Dr. Edwin Donnelly’s Lab – Medical Imaging

This summer I was given the wonderful opportunity to work in Dr. Donnelly’s lab. During this time I had the chance to work very closely with Dr. Donnelly and Dr. Ron Price. Dr. Donnelly and Dr. Price spent many hours working with myself and Kristyn Shaffer who also participated in the RET program this summer.

As a returning participant in Dr. Donnelly’s lab, I was able to jump right in and help Kristyn get acclimated faster to the process of taking x-rays. In the lab we were given to the task to determine if the cabinet x-ray system currently being used could be used to measure bone-mineral density of small animals. During this process, we first had to image phantoms and multiple energies with and with filters and with and without different scattering devices. After processing the data and multiple meetings with Dr. Donnelly and Dr. Price, a method was devised to test on actual mice. Our data proved to be very promising. We presented our data to Faxitron, the company that produces the cabinet x-ray machine. Faxitron was extremely happy with our results and hoped to get the updated machine up and running soon. Also, this summer we worked on a scattering project. We were trying to determine how different materials and thicknesses of these materials scatter x-rays. Specifically we were trying to determine if a specific pattern would emerge. We were able to collect a great amount of data that was rather surprising to Dr. Donnelly and Dr. Price. Now the research mentors have the task of decimating our data into something useful.