UMass researchers teaching computers to inte...( the area of particular concernand br...),Health

"It is hoped that when the technique is perfected, neurologists will be able to watch the volume of damaged tissue while treating the patient with experimental drugs, to see which can promote a decrease in the damaged area," said Pleet, who is working on the project along with Richard Hicks M.D., and chief of the division of neuroradiology at Baystate. "This method will be much quicker and more sensitive than older techniques of doing periodic neurological examinations and trying to compare them," Pleet said. "And it will be much quicker than outcome studies in which the functional status of the stroke victim can only be determined months after the event, and is then compared with other victims who have not had the treatment," he added.

"Of course we love to do beautiful mathematics, but here we want to do sound math and statistics for a problem that's clinically important," Horowitz said. "What I really love about applied mathematics is you have to bring to bear all your knowledge on these very hard, real problems, and sometimes you're able to accomplish something with math or statistics that you couldn't have done otherwise."

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Contact: Joseph Horowitz
joeh@math.umass.edu
413-545-6012
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
23-Jun-1999