With a mother who was a doctor and a father who was a software engineer, Saskia van Heumen’s choice of studying Clinical Technology at TU Delft meant that the apple did not fall far from the tree. “I always loved hearing my mother’s stories about her fellowships,” she says. “I was fascinated by the human body, but a profession as a doctor did not appeal to me. And as I also love technology, I went looking for applied technology in the medical field. I found out about Clinical Technology’s open day and this turned out to be the perfect study for me.”

Medical imaging

Saskia was in the first cohort of this programme that started in 2014. After her bachelor, she went to England for a year to do a post graduate at University College London on medical physics and imaging. “I liked it so much that once I was back in the Netherlands, I started the Technical Medicine - Imaging & Intervention master’s. It’s an alliance between TU Delft, Erasmus MC and LUMC. You do four internships of 10 weeks in the hospital in the second year of the master’s. I already had quite a lot of theoretical knowledge about medical imaging and was looking forward to putting it into practice. I was able to do various bits of research into the use of images in medical interventions in several hospitals. One of these was during my internship in dental, oral and maxillofacial surgery. I helped make surgical 3D moulds from CT scans, of the mouth for example. Surgeons use these moulds so they know exactly how to operate. I found this incredible as you immediately see how your research helps the quality of healthcare.”

From sound to light

During her graduation internship, Saskia learned about photoacoustic imaging. Make images of the body was a relatively new and very promising technology. “We already know about ultrasound machines which use sound waves to create images,” Saskia explains, “but in photoacoustic you send light pulses into the body instead of sound waves. The LED light is absorbed and this ensures that the tissue warms up locally and expands. This then creates sound waves. As different types of tissue and injected contrast medium absorb light differently, you can use different wave lengths to create images and distinguish them from each other. Together, the sound waves that result then form an image.” 

Patients

“So it was really amazing after all the, sometimes frustrating, preparations to finally start doing the real work with patients. The patients that took part in the research project first went to the plastic surgeon for the regular examination and then came to me for the photoacoustics. This was done on the condition that the images would not affect the decisions of the surgeon.” Saskia is proud of the outcome. “My research was the first step in showing that LED-based photoacoustics could map the lymph vessels and blood vessels in greater detail than the technique used now.”