MICCAI 2019

MICCAI 2019 DAILY Women in Science are completely silent. People call them the silent infarcts because sometimes you don’t have any symptoms associated with it. People may have them, and actually we don’t see anything. That’s actually what’s really interesting with all the vascular lesions in the brain. Historically, people thought that all those things, lacunar space, lacunar infarcts, white matter, that they were normal. They were happening, but they had no association with cognition. When looking deeper into things, they realize that it may have some implications. Did you have the curiosity to perform a CT scan of your own brain to see what’s going on? Actually, it’s not by curiosity. At some point, I needed to help in the preparation of some protocols. I sat in the scanner so I know what my brain looks like. Were you curious to check it?... or scared? Scared? No, honestly, I find it so amazing to picture the brain. What we can do is amazing. Why did you choose to specialize in the brain? Because i t ’s such a comp l ex sys tem. I have the impress i on that there i s a lways someth i ng to unders tand bet ter. I t ’s j us t a fasc i nat i ng wor l d i n i t se l f . I t ry to understand what we can do to make i t cont i nue to work . I t ’s re l ated to our who l e l i fe. The changes that we observe, espec i a l l y i n o l der age, they af fec t so many peop l e. I t ’s someth i ng that you want to unders tand bet ter to make sure that peop l e, when they age, that they cont i nue be i ng themse l ves . How many years have you spent on the brain al ready? Seven. Can you point out one achievement in the past seven years? There are so many th i ngs that are wor th i t ac tua l l y. I don ’ t th i nk i t ’s re l ated to the bra i n or j us t re l ated to why I l i ke work i ng i n med i ca l imag i ng or b i omed i ca l eng i neer i ng i n genera l . When you work wi th c l i n i c i ans , and they d i scuss wi th you what you are work i ng on, at the end, you have th i s re l at i onsh i p. You have the fee l i ng that what you d i d i s usefu l to them. For me, that ’s rea l l y, rea l l y coo l when that happens . 16