Innovative Ultrasound Technology in Neuromuscular Disease

描述(由申请人提供)：在他职业生涯中期的以患者为中心的研究研究员奖的续期中，候选人Seward Rutkove博士建议与神经学研究的年轻研究人员一起发展他的指导努力，同时继续追求他改善神经肌肉诊断技术的长期职业目标。拉特科夫博士计划指导两个特定的个人群体，自从他的第一个K24在2008年获得资助以来，他一直在尽心尽力地做这件事。第一组人由初级神经学教员组成，他们中的大多数人都在拉特科夫博士神经肌肉疾病的专科之外工作。对于这些人，他将继续定期举行一对一的会议，并将继续组织一系列教师研讨会，以帮助分享和产生研究想法。此外，他将扩大每年3倍的拨款审查和讨论会议，在会议上，初级和高级研究人员可以在公开论坛上审查个人研究人员的具体目标和研究想法。第二组被辅导者通常由住院医生和研究员组成，他们的长期目标是成为神经肌肉疾病领域的一名成功的以患者为导向的研究人员，但他们尚未确定具体的研究领域。对于这些人，拉特科夫博士将采取更“亲力亲为”的方法，定期举行一对一的会议，并提供详细的指导，以确定潜在的研究领域。也正是这群人将受益最大 直接来自Rutkove博士提议的K-24支持的用于评估神经肌肉疾病的定量诊断超声技术的研究，因为这一领域为新的研究方向和机会提供了广阔的机会。具体地说，Rutkove博士提出的研究计划侧重于开发各种基于超声的创新工具来评估肌肉，包括背向散射射频数据的自动信号分解、计算机辅助图像分割以及体积分析、电图学分析、各向异性分析和基于熵的分析。这些技术将应用于一大批患有神经肌肉疾病的成人受试者，为受训者提供充分的机会，让他们直接参与以患者为导向的研究，并确定他们自己感兴趣的研究领域。支持这项工作的环境是丰富的，包括拉特科夫博士所在的哈佛医学院/贝丝以色列女执事医学中心神经病学系的资源。除了这些指导和研究活动，在资助期间，拉特科夫博士还计划通过斯普林格出版公司，为有意在以患者为导向的研究中建立职业生涯的研究人员撰写和出版一份指南。在研究结束时，拉特科夫博士希望推动临床神经肌肉疾病研究领域的发展，同时帮助启动一批新的临床研究人员的成功职业生涯。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this renewal of his mid-career investigator award in patient oriented-research, the candidate, Dr. Seward Rutkove, proposes to develop his mentoring efforts with young investigators in neurological research while continuing the pursuit of his long-term career goal of improving neuromuscular diagnostic techniques. Dr. Rutkove plans to mentor two specific groups of individuals, as he has been doing devotedly since his first K24 was funded in 2008. The first group of individuals consists of junior neurology faculty members, most of who work outside of Dr. Rutkove's subspecialty of neuromuscular disease. For these individuals, he will continue to hold regular, one-on-one meetings and will continue to organize a faculty seminar series to help share and generate research ideas. In addition, he will expand a 3X/year grant review and discussion meeting in which investigators, both junior and more senior, can examine individual researcher's specific aims and research ideas in an open forum. The second group of mentees generally consists of residents and fellows whose long- term goal is to become a successful patient-oriented researcher in neuromuscular disease, but who have not yet identified a specific area of research. For these individuals, Dr. Rutkove will take a more "hands-on" approach with regular one-on-one meetings and detailed guidance in identifying potential areas of research. It is also this group of individuals who will benefit most directly from Dr. Rutkove's proposed K-24-supported research in quantitative diagnostic ultrasound techniques for the evaluation of neuromuscular disease, since this area offers broad opportunities for new research directions and opportunities. Specifically, Dr. Rutkove's proposed research plan focuses on the development of a variety of innovative ultrasound-based tools for the assessment of muscle, including automated signal decomposition of the backscattered radiofrequency data, computer-assisted image segmentation, and volumetric, electrographic, anisotropic, and entropy-based analyses. These techniques will be applied to a broad group of adult subjects with neuromuscular disease, providing ample opportunity for mentees to both participate directly in patient-oriented research and to identify areas of research interest of ther own. The environment supporting this work is rich and includes the resources at the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where Dr. Rutkove is based. In addition to these mentoring and research activities, during the funding period, Dr. Rutkove also plans on writing and publishing a guide for researchers interested in establishing a career in patient-oriented research, through Springer publishing. At the conclusion of the research period, Dr. Rutkove expects to have advanced the area of clinical neuromuscular disease research while helping launch the successful careers of a new set of clinical investigators.