A New Era for Women's Health Research

Columbia Engineering professors Christine Hendon and Kristin Myers first met at a new faculty orientation in 2012, sparking a unique collaboration in women’s health that has spanned more than a decade.

Hendon had just joined the Department of Electrical Engineering as an assistant professor, specializing in the optical imaging of cardiac tissue for surgical guidance. Myers, then a junior faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, approached Hendon about using her optical technique on the female reproductive system, an area she has studied since graduate school.

“I think I snagged her with the curiosity,” says Myers, now an associate professor of mechanical engineering. “And then, being female engineers, we kind of got to nerd out on the uterus.”

Since that first conversation, the pair have worked together on several projects focused on the quantitative imaging and biomechanics of women’s physiology, particularly the uterus and cervix. Women’s health has historically been understudied in engineering fields, despite the fact that many maternal and gynecological conditions have underpinnings in tissue structure and function. Myers and Hendon hope to do for women’s health what engineering has done for disciplines like orthopedics and cardiology.

“There are many areas of medicine where we’ve seen that technology has made a large impact, either in terms of analytics for predictive algorithms and risk assessment or devices for sensing and measuring physio- logical conditions,” says Hendon, now an associate professor of electrical engineering. “The women’s health technology market is not as explored as it could be, so there are just so many opportunities for engineers to help.”

Their collaborative research started with exploring the tissue properties of the cervix and how it contributes to preterm birth. Preterm birth complications are the leading cause of death among children under 5 and affect more than one in 10 babies worldwide. The cervix, a soft fibrous organ that connects the uterus and vagina, controls when the baby exits the uterus during childbirth. Spontaneous preterm birth can occur when the cervical structure is compromised and unable to cope with downward pressure generated by the uterus.

Learning from twins

The Myers lab builds digital twins of the uterus and cervix to quantify the amount of mechanical loading on the soft tissue structures supporting the fetus and uncover the structural reasons for preterm birth. To create a more accurate digital twin, Hendon and her colleagues use optical coherence tomography (OCT) to characterize collagen fiber orientation and dispersion in cervical samples, which provides information about the mechanical properties. OCT — an optical imaging modality regularly employed in ophthalmology — takes high-resolution, cross-sectional images of tissue with light.

The researchers observed cervical tissue at micron-scale levels of detail and mapped how the variable properties of collagen fiber can make one susceptible to preterm birth. In fact, early results show measuring patient- specific cervical stiffness and load pattern predicts preterm birth better than the clinical standard of care, which is simply measuring the length of the cervix. Using a mechanics-based approach, they aim to build a preterm birth risk assessment tool that is tailored to the individual patient to replace outdated, one-size-fits-all options.

“Eventually, we want to get to a point where we can diagnose medical conditions like preterm birth and fibroids earlier,” Hendon says. “Almost universally in medicine, if you identify things earlier, the easier it is to treat that condition and with better outcomes.”

Previously, they performed fundamental optical and biomechanical characterizations of the human uterus with samples taken from patients, both pregnant and not pregnant, who underwent hysterectomy. Most recently, Myers and Hendon have been tackling uterine fibroids, benign growths that form in the uterus. About 70% of women have uterine fibroids by the onset of menopause, and up to half suffer from symptoms like heavy menstrual bleeding, reproductive issues, pain, and frequent urination.

They work closely with Arnold Advincula, vice chair of women’s health and chief of gynecology at the Sloane Hospital for Women at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, specializing in minimally invasive surgical techniques such as removal of fibroids.

"He has special techniques that can pluck out fibroids in hopes of saving the uterus,” Myers says. “We want to build tools that can help him with surgical planning and diagnose if a patient’s fibroids are going to be harmful.”

Last year, the pair helped establish Columbia Engineering’s Women’s Health Initiative, which brings together a multidisciplinary community of engineers, physicians, and professionals for what remains a largely understudied and underfunded field. The initiative not only sheds light on gynecology and pregnancy but also aging, cancer, and sex-based differences.

“There’s been growing interest in women’s health across the board, and there are many faculty and students who want to become involved,” says Hendon. “We believe this initiative can provide a mechanism for like-minded people to come together, build teams, and drive innovation.”

“This field of women’s health — pardon the pun, but it’s our baby. Christine and I started this work before being moms, and then we both became moms around the same time,” says Myers. “So we’ve been patients ourselves, gone through the standard of care, and seen the gaps. As engineers, we feel like we can tackle them.”

Read the original story here: https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/about/magazine/winter25/new-era-womens-health-research