Cardiovascular MRI
Cardiac Imaging
Cardiac imaging is technically challenging as the heart is literally a
moving target. Beating 10 times faster than the human heart, we can now
capture a mouse heart beat in a fraction of a second using our
state-of-the-art MRI system funded by the British Heart Foundation.
These ultrafast techniques are used to generate information about
cardiac structure, function, tissue health and cellular viability. In
collaboration with Mark Pepys, Paul Riley, Derek Hausenloy, we are using
our high-speed imaging techniques and novel forms of image contrast to
study life-threatening diseases such as amyloidosis and heart attacks.
Our aim is to use a cross-disciplinary approach to tackle heart disease,
which remains the leading cause of death in the developed world.
Stem cell therapies for myocardial infarction
Incidence of cardiovascular diseases has continued to
rise despite better understanding in their pathogenesis, and while
mortality is declining with advances in treatment, morbidity has
increased dramatically due to chronic complications from surviving the
initial event. In contrast to existing interventions which primarily
aim at limiting tissue damage, stem cell therapy has recently emerged
as a novel interventional paradigm where damaged myocardial and other
vascular tissues can be regenerated and repaired through
transplantation of these primitive cells. This project involves a
number of studies that aim to investigate some of the therapeutic
effect of stem cells in cardiovascular diseases; in particular, we
aimed to elucidate the potential cardioprotection offered by stem cells
in the very early phase following myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion
injury by using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.
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Video by Adrienne Campell
Page last modified on 12 sep 11 13:44
