Anatomy is killing me right now.  Ironically, no one in my class loves anatomy more than I.  It actually pains some classmates I know when they see how much I enjoy anatomy.  I just can't take the way it is taught anymore.  I abhor doing anatomy in "stations."  I'm not alone in this thought.  One anatomy professor "completely understands my concerns," but is yielding to another professor who enjoys "stations."  To me, the whole system is flawed.  At one station, everything is removed except arteries.  At another, everything is removed to see the muscles.  At another station, only the nerves can be seen.  Then there are other stations where we simply waste time.  It should be no surprise, that my classmates often have problems relating structures to each other.  I am doing better than most, but that is due to a large effort on my part.  I go back to anatomy lab when there is no class going on and work on one or two cadavers with most of the anatomical structures still there.  It's kinda ridiculous that there are cadavers that no student (outside of me) will use at all this block.  These cadavers haven't been dissected completely, but enough for me to find what I'm looking for.   These extra long hours are what I enjoy in anatomy....a huge contrast from just earlier today...

I am back from my hiatus.  That, of course, must mean at this particular moment life has slowed down.....definitely not true.  I am beginning work on a new project at the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT).  In some ways, it is a continuation of my work on a DARPA-funded project back at Stanford.  There, we were looking at peripheral tissue heating due to high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU).  Now at CASIT, we are going to again look at the thermal dosing problem.  This is going to be taken a step further, in that we are using a controls engineering perspective to image a target and provide auto-feedback for adjusting the focus of the HIFU.  In essence, we would like to HIFU a target.  If that target moves (e.g. movement due to inspiration/expiration), we would like for the HIFU system to self-adjust to lock-in on its target and stay there.  Ideally, our project will be a success.  The FDA will then approve the use of HIFU for tissue ablation of tumors.  And in the process, a couple papers will be published and some grants will be attained.  As of now, all of those seem far away.  I must trek through papers and help design our methods....good stuff.