KAREN KW SIU

Lecturer Department of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences And School of Physics B.Planning and Design, University of Melbourne, 1988 B. Arch. (Hons), University of Melbourne, 1991 B. Sc. (Hons), Monash University, 1998 Ph.D. X-ray Physics, Monash University, 2002 Phone +61 (3) 9905 4922 FAX +61 (3) 9905 3637 Email:Karen.Siu@sci.monash.edu.au

Volume rendering of a mouse, from computed tomography data acquired at the Medical Imaging Beamline, SPring-8, Japan. The high coherence of this synchrotron source means that air-tissue interfaces are highlighted. For instance, the cartilage rings in the trachea are particularly prominent. This project is in collaboration with Dr David Parsons of Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr Karen Siu's research interests focus on the application of synchrotron radiation to biomedical questions. Her current joint appointment as Lecturer in the School of Physics and the Department of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences at Monash University reflects both her strong background in diffraction physics and her interest in medical research, in particular in the areas of Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) and X-ray imaging.

From 2003 to 2005 Dr Siu was an Australian Synchrotron Research Program (ASRP) Fellow. The focus of this nationally competitive fellowship was the use of SAXS for the diagnosis of malignancies of the human brain and breast. This work demonstrated the first use of SAXS to distinguish benign, malignant and normal tissues of the brain based on their ultrastructural properties rather than on the traditional morphological changes used for diagnosis (Siu, Butler et al., 2005). Current related projects use SAXS to probe changes in collagen produced by breast tumors, which has opened avenues for the use of SAXS from collagen as an indicator of tumor presence (diagnosis) and, potentially, metastatic capacity. Dr Siu is also extensively involved in the development of Phase Contrast X-ray Imaging methods for dynamic imaging of the soft tissues. She demonstrated the first use of a simple Analyser-based Phase Contrast method for dynamic imaging (Siu, Kitchen et al., 2005), and is a key team member in efforts to use Propagation-based imaging of the airways and the lungs in vivo to elucidate the mechanisms of neonatal lung aeration and lung disease (Lewis, Yagi et al, 2005).

Due to the cross-diciplinary nature of her research, Dr Siu has established collaborations with domestic and international researchers across the physical sciences, life sciences and clinical medicine. Her domestic collaborations external to Monash University include those with researchers at the University of New England, Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Monash Medical Centre and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Her current international collaborators include researchers from Daresbury Laboratory, UK, Cranfield University, UK, University of Saskachewan, Canada, and the SPring-8 synchrotron, Japan.

Dr Siu has worked at extensively at synchrotrons in Europe, Japan and the UK. She is the manager of the Osmic SAXS instrument within the School of Physics at Monash University, overseeing its installation and the design and manufacture of specialised sample environments.

PhD Scholarship: Assessment of Therapies for Cystic Fibrosis Using Phase Contrast Imaging

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Falzon, G., S. Pearson, R. Murison, C. J. Hall, K. K. W. Siu, A. Evans, K. D. Rogers and R. A. Lewis (2006). "Wavelet-based feature extraction applied to small angle X-ray scattering patterins from breast tissue: a tool for differentiating between tissue types." Phys. Med. Biol. 51: 2465-2477.

Briedis D, Siu K K W, Paganin D, Pavlov K and Lewis R A (2005). "Analyser-based mammography using single-image reconstruction." Phys. Med. Biol. 50: 3599-3611.

Lewis, R. A., N. Yagi, M. J. Kitchen, M. J. Morgan, D. Paganin, K. K. W. Siu, I. Williams, K. Uesugi, M. Wallace, C. J. Hall, J. Whitley and S. B. Hooper (2005). "Dynamic imaging of the lungs using X-ray phase contrast." Phys. Med. Biol. 50: 5031-40.

Siu K K W, Butler S M, Beveridge T, Gillam J E, Hall C J, Kaye A H, Lewis R A, Mannan K, McLoughlin G, Pearson S, Round A, Schultke E, Webb G I and Wilkinson S (2005). "Identifying markers of pathology in SAXS data of malignant tissues of the brain." Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 548(1-2): 140-146.

Pavlov K M, Gureyev T E, Paganin D, Nesterets Y I, Kitchen M J, Siu K K W, Gillam J E, Uesugi K, Yagi N, Morgan M J and Lewis R A (2005). "Unification of analyser-based and propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging." Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 548(1-2): 163-168.

K Siu, A Y Nikulin, P Zaumseil, H Yamazaki and T Ishikawa (2003). "Application of phase retrieval x-ray diffractometry to carbon doped SiGe(C)/Si(C) superlattice structures." J. Appl. Phys. 94(2): 1007-12.

K Siu, A Y Nikulin, P Wells, E Harvey, T Bigault, A K Freund and T Ishikawa (2003). "Unambiguous X-ray phase retrieval from small angle scattering data." J. Appl. Phys. 93(9): 5161-6.

K Siu, A Y Nikulin, K Tamasaku and T Ishikawa (2001). "X-ray phase retrieval in high resolution refraction data from amorphous materials." Appl. Phys. Lett. 79(13): 2112-14.