Under the Knife(25)

Spencer really wanted to hear about those supercomputer results. He’d been waiting for months. Besides, Raj was right: He should be wearing the damn thing. There was no excuse.

He pulled his Prius to a stop behind the red Tesla, which was idling at a red light.

“Okay. Just give me one sec.”

Intermittently casting glances at the traffic light, Spencer opened a side pocket of the satchel and removed a tan-colored, circular object the size and thickness of a quarter. He peeled a removable strip from one side of it, revealing an adhesive backing. He pushed the object, adhesive side down, to the skin behind his right ear, where it stuck fast, like a Band-Aid.

He felt around on top of it with his forefinger until he located a small knob sticking up along one edge of its circular border. Using his fingernail, he pushed the knob along a tiny linear track that ran from one side of the circle, through the object’s center, and ended at the opposite side.

“All set,” he said, once the knob had clicked into position at the opposing edge of the circle. “I just turned it on.”

“Let me check the integrity of the EEG signal.”

All of a sudden, the Prius’s satellite radio, tuned to a classical station, started to fade in and out. Spencer tried a different station. Same story. “Hey. Raj. My satellite radio isn’t working.”

“Yeah. The same thing happens in my car when I’m wearing it. The signal sometimes screws with satellite and wireless. Need to work on that.”

Spencer drummed his fingers idly on the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change, and for Raj to confirm things were good on his end. EEGs (or, more properly, electroencephalograms) were devices that mapped the electrical currents of the brain. Neurologists used EEGs to diagnose diseases like epilepsy. Existing EEGs were big and bulky, and required numerous electrodes placed over the skull with wires connecting them to a recording machine.

The EEG that Spencer now wore, designed and built by him and Raj (well, Raj, mostly), required only a single wireless electrode placed behind the right ear. This electrode transmitted brain-wave signals directly to a server in Raj’s lab, and Raj could monitor these signals with an app on his phone. It was slick stuff, with tons of commercial applications. Already a few biotech companies were sniffing them out, but he and Raj needed more proof that it actually worked before they could start trying to close deals.

“Okay. We’ve got a nice signal,” Raj said. “Recording as we speak. Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful brain waves?”

“Sweet talker. I bet you say that to all the neurosurgeons.”

“Only the cute ones. I see you’re on Torrey Pines Road. Heading north.”

“How did—”

“The signal from the EEG’s like a GPS. Shows your exact location. Hadn’t I mentioned that before?”

“No. But—cool, I guess. In a disturbing, Big Brother kind of way.”

“Oh, please. No different than your cell phone. Do you have the extra EEG pads I gave you?”

“Yes.” As he drew a second EEG pad from his satchel and shoved it into his pocket, the light turned green, and the red Tesla shot away like a dragster. Spencer scowled and slid his Prius forward at a sensible speed. “Just in case I find someone else stupid enough to wear one. So. The MRI data? How do they look?”

“Awesome. Hold on a sec.” Raj groaned, and Spencer heard bedsprings squealing. He was getting out of bed. “This generation of software can take existing images and sharpen them way better than we’d ever hoped. Huge improvement.”

“Really?” Spencer was skeptical. The previous version of their MRI software had been pretty damn impressive.

In addition to being longtime buddies, Raj and Spencer were research collaborators, both professors at the University of California. Spencer was no slouch in the IQ department, and he jokingly pointed out to friends that what Raj did for a living wasn’t exactly brain surgery. But they both knew that Raj’s intellect, armed with an MD from UCLA and a PhD in applied physics from Cal Tech, could run circles around Spencer’s.

Together, they aimed to improve the diagnosis of brain tumors and other diseases with magnetic resonance imaging: MRI. Rather than enhance the MRI machines themselves—which were big, expensive things that filled up entire rooms—they were working on the pictures: the grey-hued images from which radiologists diagnosed diseases, and which neurosurgeons like Spencer used as road maps for performing brain surgery. MRIs were essentially digital photographs. And like any digital photograph, MRIs could be touched up, their pixels coaxed into sharper and more precise images.

So, like a super-advanced form of Photoshop, Raj and Spencer were writing new software to improve MRIs. They were a perfect team: Spencer supplied the surgical expertise, patients, and MRIs; Raj supplied the engineering and software-coding skills, and a few grad students for grunt work. They’d been working on this for the last three years and were getting really good at it. A few months ago, in fact, they’d scored a five-million-dollar government grant that would keep their lab going for at least another five years.

“Really. Wait till you see the images. They’re awesome. We’re able to make out structures the size of proteins. Proteins, Spencer! Small ones, on the order of less than fifty amino acids in length. Think about it. Think about what we could do with that!”