ISBI Daily - Friday

that gives us the structure of the lungs, and you can have people that can have lungs that look very normal, but that they don’t function very normally or vice versa. You have people that function normally but have very poor- looking lungs. And your science would help recognize between these different types? It comes into it. I do quite a bit of work on the best way to image with computer tomography for lung disease characterization, in particularly lowering radiation dose, so that those quantitative features stay reliable. That’s one area, and then how it sort of connects in with my interests with lung cancer is that diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are a risk factor, so they increase your chances of having a malignancy. And so, part of the work in my lab is sort of understanding how those quantitative computer tomography features, not only from the nodule but also from other markers of lung disease contribute to cancer risk. If you could speak to the public, what would you tell them to beware of? Don’t smoke! [ Laughs ] But in many young people this argument does not bring anything home. I think cancer is the most prominent downside that’s demonstrated for smoking, lung cancer specifically, which I think potentially young people feel is an outcome that will happen so far down the track that they don’t worry about it. That’s not going to happen to a 20-year-old person, it’s going to happen when I’m 60 and I’ll be old then and my life will be over, anyway. [ Laughs ] But I think it is important for us to promote for young kids the importance of preventative health. I think there is a movement towards more work-life balance, more ownership over preventative screening. It takes a part of that, the development of screening programs that we take part of, to look for cancer but also for potentially other diseases that may come on and affect your quality of life sooner than potentially cancer would come and impact you. So there are stronger arguments than cancer, probably. Yes, I think so. Definitely in the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic inflammation concerns that younger and younger people should be aware of. Do you know, personally, smokers? Not really anymore, no. [ Laughs ] Well, 4 Friday ISBI DAILY Jessica Sieren