Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, April 24, 2023
Evaluation of Pulmonary Hypertension with MRI
Daniel Seiter
Graduate Research Assistant
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is defined as the buildup of pressure in the pulmonary circulation. Most commonly caused secondary to left heart failure, PH can lead to right heart failure if left untreated. Symptoms of PH are nonspecific, including shortness of breath and fatigue, making PH difficult to stratify and diagnose. The current gold standard of diagnosis is invasive cardiopulmonary exercise testing with right heart catheterization (iCPET-RHC).
Cardiovascular MRI (CMR) offers a compelling noninvasive and nonionizing imaging alternative. Ventricular volume measurements have shown great value in a variety of pathologies, and CMR has been established as the gold standard of ventricle assessment. Furthermore, blood velocity and flow in the entire cardiopulmonary circulation can be assessed in a single scan using 4D Flow MRI. Here we present novel CMR tools for evaluating PH, including 4D flow measurements in a swine model and real time exercise CMR measurements from a clinical study.
Comprehensive, lesion-level, longitudinal disease assessment and its clinical implications
Victor Santoro Fernandes
Graduate Research Assistant
In this seminar we will explore the use of automated image analysis in disease response assessment for metastatic cancer patients, with a focus on lesion-level analysis. Metastatic cancer patients often have multiple longitudinal images, with tens or even hundreds of lesions, making comprehensive and longitudinal disease response assessment a clinical impossibility. Heterogeneous response of lesions further complicates accurate assessment, as some lesions may respond while others progress under the same systematic therapy.
Functional images are a valuable tool in assessing response, but the quantitative aspects remain underexplored. Automated image analysis can enable comprehensive, longitudinal, lesion-level response assessment, and provide quantitative and consistent measurements of disease response. This talk will examine how automated image analysis can lead to clinically meaningful insights about response assessment in metastatic cancers, helping clinicians to make better informed treatment decisions, potentially improving patient outcomes.