Dr Pankaj Garg, a newly appointed NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology, has been awarded an Academy of Medical Sciences starter grant (拢25,400) to research advanced imaging tools for cardiovascular diagnosis and intervention. Working under the mentorship of Professor Jim Wild and Professor Julian Gunn, Pankaj's grant, entitled 鈥淲hole heart, four-dimensional flow magnetic resonance imaging for accurate assessment of right and left heart flow haemodynamics鈥, will develop four-dimensional flow (4D) flow models to accurately predict cardiovascular haemodynamics and to develop novel therapeutic targets in heart disease patients.
Non-invasive, 4D flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) allows accurate quantification of intra-cardiac flow (Figure 1). It circumvents issues of geometrical assumptions and through-plane motion of 2D mitral inflow metrics on Doppler echocardiography and 2D phase-contrast MRI.