About the Project
Questions of Participation
Our research starts from the question: what does it mean to participate in research as a volunteer? What does it mean to the volunteer? to the researcher? and for the progress of the research? Is it sufficient that volunteers give their bodies to be tested, or would there be advantages (to them and to the research) if they were asked to give their minds also and contribute their views on the experience and what this implies for the research?
The Project
To find answers to some of these questions, we set up a collaboration between two sociologists of science and a group of medical physicists developing a radically new method of imaging what is inside the breast, by using light waves instead of X-rays or ultrasound. This has potential for the diagnosis of cancer and has advantages over other methods of breast screening, on grounds of safety (no damaging X-rays) and the kinds of detail shown in the images. We started our collaboration at the point where the team were just moving from testing their prototype instrument on plastic dummies, to testing on real people. A first series of volunteers have undergone breast scans with the new instrument, and the team subsequently undertook a second series of tests with a redesigned instrument and a larger group of patient-volunteers.
Stage 1 of this project, which ran from 2002 to 2005, was entitled "Patients as partners in a biomedical research project". For a summary of this first stage, see the Project Outcome Report in the left hand menu. Stage 2, entitled 'The role and contribution of volunteers in biomedical research', is now formally completed but work continues on writing up and dissemination of results.
Image of fibre holder rings and support frame for optical tomography of the breast; image courtesy of the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory, UCL.
