MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2017 | Page 23

Optical Imaging
in Africa
Researchers are using advanced optical imaging technology to study the rela-
tionship between nutrition and brain growth in the developing world.
The aging pickup truck bounces along a dirt road somewhere outside
Bissora, one of the larger towns in the Oio region of the West African nation
of Guinea-Bissau. The road, a major thoroughfare in the region, is pocked
with holes. The rest of the year these would be deep and dusty. But it’s July
now, monsoon season, and they are filled with water from the rains, and
as often as not with pigs enjoying a warm summer bath. The driver dodges
and weaves as he urges the truck forward.
In the back of the pickup is a piece of equipment, a tool not likely seen
before in the region—a portable, noninvasive brain monitoring device
incorporating specialized lasers and other optical technologies. In the front,
alongside the driver, are the two scientists who transported the device from
their high-tech lab in Boston. The truck rumbles on toward the next village,
where already a group of children and their parents are gathering to meet
them.
Maria Angela Franceschini, a researcher with the MGH Martinos Center
for Biomedical Imaging and an associate professor of radiology at Harvard
Medical School, has traveled to Guinea-Bissau several times over the past
year and a half to contribute to an ongoing research study there. On each of
these trips, she was accompanied by Pei-Yei (Ivy) Lin, previously a postdoc-
toral fellow in the Center and now an assistant professor at Boston Children’s
Hospital. The study has tested whether a particular food-based interven-
tion can help treat malnutrition in children in resource-poor regions, and
improve cognitive performance and brain growth. Franceschini’s role: to
wield the sophisticated optical monitoring device to measure brain devel-
opment in the children participating in the study.
20