Dr. Bálint Soma Környei, aged 31, is a final-year PhD student at the Department of Medical Imaging. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He studied diagnostic analytics at the University of Pécs Faculty of Health Sciences for a year, and, following his ambitions, he transferred to the Medical School in 2011. As a child, he also considered becoming a computer game tester but decided to go with the medical profession, which was supported by both his parents - mainly his father, an associate professor working at the Institute of Physiology - and his grandparents. His fascination with sophisticated, visual graphic solutions also contributed to his interest in imaging techniques. He and his young and ambitious team are currently working at the Clinical Centre's Rákóczi road site, where several computers are linked together to support their neuroimaging research.
Written by Rita Schweier
"One of my greatest experiences at the university was when my thesis supervisor, Dr. Arnold Tóth, senior lecturer at the Department of Medical Imaging and Head of the Department of Interventional Radiology, came into one of our anatomy practices and showed us in real life what we had only seen on slides or in atlases before: 3D reconstructed so-called diffusion tensor on MRI reconstructions. From then on, neuroanatomy became much easier to understand and learn. From the second semester of the second year, we started working together, which was not easy because I had hardly any programming knowledge. I just fell into the world of modern neuroimaging, but despite this, I won second place at the first in-house scientific conference and qualified for the 2015 National Scientific Students’ Associations Conference," says Dr. Bálint Környei, who went on to win several awards afterwards, winning almost every competition. In 2015, he won the Astellas Prize of Astellas Pharma Kft. in the young researcher category, and by the time he graduated, he had three co-authored publications, several international conference presentations, a poster with a special award at the European Radiology Conference, a Pro Scientia Gold Medal, and the Gyula Mestyán Prize. He has been working in this field for ten years.
As he says, he has received a lot of support from Professors Attila Schwarcz, András Büki, and Tamás Dóczi at the Pécs Diagnostic Center, the Department of Neurosurgery, and the Department of Medical Imaging, as well as from Professor Péter Bogner, Head of the Department of Medical Imaging, from his supervisors, and all members of the research team. He found himself in a professional, friendly, and inspiring environment in which he enjoyed working, and the fact that he was treated as a colleague meant a lot to him. The fact that he was a biology and chemistry student at the Lajos Nagy Grammar School of the Cistercian Order in Pécs, a class from which several students have made it to the finals of the OKTV in several subjects, and have participated in and won international competitions, may have contributed to his success. Among his former classmates, with whom he still keeps in touch, are Junior Príma award winners and Pro Scientia Gold Medallists a well.
"Neurosurgery is on the top shelf for me. I was convinced that I was going to be a neurosurgeon, which is why I started TDK and got closer and closer to neuroimaging research and intervention. Through the Hungarian Medical Association of America (HMAA), I went to Buffalo, New York, to the Neurosurgery Clinic of the State University of New York, where it was like entering Disneyland. It was not a problem to get up at four in the morning and be in the operating theater until six in the evening. Professor Péter Bogner, who offered me the only place for residency at the time, played a major role in my admission. It was a very gratifying recognition. My turn to radiology from neurosurgery was a long process, and Professor Bogner's invitation was the culmination of it. I still very much enjoy what I do," he adds.
His research focuses on the study of diffuse axonal injury caused by head trauma using modern MRI imaging techniques. Conventional imaging techniques cannot directly examine this, but it can be visualized along pathological components using different modern MRI modalities. These include cerebral microbleeds or oedemas, the association of which with axonal damage, clinical practice, and outcome is not yet fully understood. Microbleeds appear to indicate a capillary-level injury, but if they occur with oedema, or oedema occurs alone, they indicate damage to the white matter. In their studies, they are trying to find the correlations at the level of imaging, on the one hand, and they evaluate the results they see with neuropsychological tests, with the help of their neuropsychologist colleagues, on the other.
Deaths caused by head trauma are the leading cause of death among people under 40 in developed countries, which is why he chose this area to study. He was captivated by its complexity, which applies to imaging, examination methods, clinical practice, and disease outcomes as well. There are only a few parts of the process today that he does not thoroughly understand or has actively participated in.
"Sooner or later, the method for solving the clinical problem will emerge. It takes a lot of patience, ambition, and perseverance, as well as knowledge of physics, biophysics, mathematics, anatomy, and information technology. We can now use algorithms and artificial intelligence to help us with coding, but this is often not enough. The staff of the Department of Bioanalysis - led by Dr. Kornélia Farkas - and the researchers of the Pécs Diagnostic Center provide us with a lot of support, but we are still mainly our own dispatchers, IT specialists, lawyers, and managers: we handle the bureaucratic background work, call patients in and back for MRI examinations and, after thorough retrospective data mining, for questionnaire interviews. I am very inspired by this type of work because I cannot get tired of it, and it constantly generates new problems to be solved. Moreover, I am a competitive type, I do not like to be bored, so this type of research was really designed for me," he explains.
As a TDK supervisor, he is very proud of his ambitious colleagues: Dr. Dávid Bognár, Péter Laár, and Zalán Petneházy, but also of all his TDK students, among whom there are several students participating in the English program.
As he says, he was a thesis co-supervisor when he was a first-year PhD student, and since then he has had at least one such task every year. He has also helped with several Dean's Competition essays, one of which is currently in progress. He is proud of the young students because they all take their tasks seriously.
The young research team is currently based and conducting examinations in an office at the Clinical Centre's Rákóczi road site. There are several computers linked together, but this does not mean that they are only working here, since MRI images of patients are mainly taken at the Pécs Diagnostic Center. As he says, their research also has strong scientific and social benefits, which is a major motivation for them to become more and more successful.
Photos:
Dávid VERÉBI