IN PROFILE: Derek Cool - MD/PhD student

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By Paul Mayne
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Cool things happening with imaging    
 
 
MD/PhD student Derek Cool shows off the 3-D ultrasound guided prostate biopsy device he is developing with Aaron Fenster, director of imaging at the Robarts Research Institute.
 
 
 
Dr. Cool. It has a nice ring to it, but that’s not why Derek Cool continues to work on his graduate degree at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
 
“The primary research I wanted to do - the imaging research - London and Western, I was told, was the centre in Canada, if not one of the tops in the world,” says the Barrie native, who completed an undergraduate degree in computer science at the University of North Carolina.
 
Cool had assumed a career in computer science or computer graphics was ahead, but following an internship in his last undergraduate year he had the feeling his career path was about to change.
 
For a fourth-year project, he used his computer science background to conduct image analysis using MRIs of the brain, developing computer algorithms to extract blood vessels and compare them across patients to identify any abnormalities.
 
“I found this quite intriguing and realized that medicine was something I was interested in.”
 
Cool applied to Western in 2004 and was accepted into MD/PhD program (seven years), which is jointly sponsored by the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
 
The program opens the door to a career combining research and clinical practice, combining undergraduate medicine and leading edge research with scientists in the faculty or one of the research institutes.
 
“It has allowed me to pull in some of my computer skills and my programming abilities to help design medical devices,” he says.
 
Cool did three years of full- time PhD research work and for the last two years has been taking first- and second-year medical class, along with some research on the side and during the summer months.
 
Cool is currently assisting in development of a 3D ultrasound guided prostate biopsy device, along with Aaron Fenster, director of imaging at the Robarts Research Institute.
 
An issue with the current 2D biopsy procedure is, especially with early stage cancers, tumours can’t be seen. Cool says up to 30 per cent of men with cancer will come back as negative on the first biopsy.
 
“I’ve heard of men having five or six procedures before finding the cancer,” says Cool. “The cancers are often small and you might miss it.”
 
With the 3-D device, it would be known exactly which areas of the prostate were biopsied previously.
 
“With the 2-D method, they really can’t tell where they went to previously, so they could actually be sampling the same tissue again and missing the cancer elsewhere,” says Cool.
 
There may also be circumstances when doctors want to target the same region again, and the 3-D device allows for that.
 
At this stage the device is in a testing phase. One system developed in the Robarts lab has been commercialized by a company in California and has been extremely useful at the clinical level, says Cool. On a research basis, they have had about 50 patients, with cancer detected in six patients because of the device.
 
“It’s amazing to be part of it,” says Cool. “That was part of my interest in getting into the idea of medical device design; to develop something, to build something and then to see it go all the way to having it be used with patients. Your ideal goal is that it will be adopted and help patients not just locally, but worldwide.”
 
It’s safe to say Cool has found his new career.
 
“There is huge potential for developing technologies and that’s what I like about this program, the work you do is not just something that will go in a book and sit on a shelf. This work has larger applications.”
 
Cool adds the field of radiology and medicine is constantly changing. The technology could be used in other areas, such as the breast, liver or kidney.
 
Cool credits the “extremely collaborative environment” in the imaging lab at Robarts as making a difference in his research.
 
The next step for Cool will be residency after 2011 graduation. His ultimate goal is to set up at an academic centre, with a combination of research and seeing patients through clinical practice.
 
“When you’re seeing patients you’re getting a sense of what’s happening in health care - what are the needs; what needs to be fixed.”
 

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