Supervisor:
Program of Study:
PhD, Medical Physics
Project Title:
MRI Radiomics to Assess Immunotherapy for Glioblastoma
Research Summary:
Glioblastoma is a brain tumour with poor survival. Treatment includes surgery to remove
the tumour followed by radiation and chemotherapy (chemo). In most cases, even with treatment,
cancer will return. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps the body’s immune
system fight cancer and could be useful in treating brain cancers.
When we study these new therapies, we use blood draws and tissue removal. However, we
get little information about how the therapies interact with the immune system. This is a big
problem because not all patients respond the same. This slows the process of making these
therapies widely available.
MRI is used to image the body. Some tissues are difficult to see in images, so we can inject
special agents to provide contrast. This gives us lots of information on how the therapy interacts
with the brain cancer. But we get hundreds of images from this. These agents can target specific
cells to track them. This makes it hard to study. This project looks at how we can use a special
computing method called Radiomics to get features from images. We are also creating computer
programs using machine learning to analyze all the data to see if any of the features are linked to
treatment success. This will help us better understand these brain cancer therapies. This will make them more likely to help patients.
Scholarships and/or Awards:
-
- BHCRI CRTP Travel Award – March 2024
- BHCRI CRTP Travel Award – September 2022
- BHCRI Canadian Cancer Society’s JD Irving Excellence in Research CRTP Award 2022
- Cancer Research Training Program (CRTP) Traineeship Award 2020
- Restracomp Sick Kids Research Institute 2017
- Canadian Graduate Scholarship Master’s (NSERC) 2017
Career Aspirations:
Continuing to pursue my research interests in diagnostic imaging and molecular MRI.
Location:
IWK Health Sciences Centre
Publications:
Riberdy V, Ruiz E, Hoekstra N, Struik G, Pignol JP. “Comparison of visibility of iodinated hydrogel and gadolinium-modified hyaluronic acid spacer gels on CT, CBCT and planar kV imaging,” Phys Imaging Radiat Oncol. 2022.
Riberdy V, Litvack M, Stirrat E, Couch M, Post M, Santyr GE. “Hyperpolarized 129Xe imaging of embryonic stem cell-derived alveolar-like macrophages in rat lungs: proof-of-concept study using superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles,” Magn Reson Med. 2019.
Riberdy VA, Frederickson CJ, Rehse SJ, “Determination of the Zinc Concentration in Human Fingernails by Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy,” Appl. Spectrosc. 2017; 71(4):567-582.