Summer Internship Journals: Robert Gallo '17 at Brigham and Women's Hospital
With his passion for robotics, Robert Gallo ’17 is in his element this summer as an intern in the Surgical Planning Lab (SPL) at Brigham and Women's Hospital. His work is cutting-edge—fine-tuning the programming of a robot designed to make the treatment of abdominal cancer simpler. Last year’s summer intern, Charlie Watkins ’16 finished his internship in the lab with a patent pending on a robotic accessory he developed.
Here is Robert's first journal entry:
In the basement of Brigham and Women's Hospital lies a small door, unnoticed by most patients as they receive treatment in one of Boston's top hospitals. Behind this door is the Surgical Planning Lab (SPL), which can be described as the intersection of medicine and robotics, with some of the top minds in Robotics and Computer Science coming here from across the globe to work under Dr. Nobuhiko Hata. Each day, during my walk to the lab from the train station, I know that everything I attempt that day will be novel, using the latest in Robotics technology to develop better treatments for patients.
The work falls under the umbrella of Image-Guided Therapy, which aims to use images from MRI machines to guide the treatment of patients. Robots are used for the precision they provide and their ability to process the data from the MRI machine, which minimizes the effect they have on the patient. There are several different projects going on at once, ranging from a "snake" robot that travels into the lungs, to a system that allows clinicians to easily interact with these devices. The project I currently work on is a robot designed to make the treatment of abdominal cancer simpler, using robotic guides and MRI images to target a needle at a precise point, reducing errors in needle placement and resulting in less invasive treatment.
Click here to read the rest of Robert's journal on our Facebook page.
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