ben hicks

Host Institution: University of Strathclyde

I began academia as a Physics undegraduate at the university of York, where my project on the design of magentic nanoparticles for magnetic hyperthermia cancer treatement. This lead my interests towards medical technology, which I pursued at Warwick university in a biomedical engineering masters. Here I worked on a communication devised for patients suffering from Locked in Syndrome that could enable them to communicate using EMG signals from muscle contractions.

PhD: I am exploring the potential for quantitative ultrasound (QUS) to be used as a detection method for deep tissue injury. Deep tissue injury (DTI) is a form of pressure injury that forms at the bone tissue interface during bouts of prolongued or heavy loading. Lower limb prosthetic users are at high risk of developing DTI as the soft tissues in their residual limbs often cannot tolerate the loading conditions associated with stace or walking. As DTI develops deep in the tissues, it is difficult to diagnose until it has spread to the surface, by which point the damage is severe.

In QUS statistical analysis is applied to the raw data signal from an ultrasound scan to infer information about the structure and scatterign density of the medium the signal has travelled through. Instead of looking at the larger geometry like in a typical B-mode US scan, statistical analysis of the signal reveals information about the arrangement of the sub-resolution scatterers that do not appear on the B-mode image. As DTI causes a change in the tissue microstructure, QUS should be a viable candidate for detecting this change.

Links: LinkedIn