MRI or CT scans provide physicians with a detailed picture of their patients’ internal anatomy. Heart surgeons often use these images to plan surgeries.
Unfortunately, these anatomical images don’t show how the blood is flowing through the vessels — which is critical, according to Alison Marsden, PhD, a Stanford associate professor of pediatrics and of bioengineering. In the video above, she explains that many surgeons currently use a pencil and paper to sketch out their surgical plan based on the patient’s images. She hopes to change this.
Marsden and her colleagues at Stanford’s Cardiovascular Biomechanics Computational Lab are developing a new technique — using imaging data and specialized simulation software — to predict what is likely to happen during heart surgery.
“What we’re trying to do is bring in that missing piece of what are these detailed blood flow patterns and what might happen if we go in and make an intervention, for example, opening up a blocked blood vessel or putting in a bypass graft,” Marsden said in a recent Stanford Engineering news story.
Their open source software, called SimVascular, loads the imaging data, constructs a 3D anatomical model of the heart and then simulates the patient’s blood flow. It has already been used to help design the surgical plan for several babies born with a severe form of congenital heart disease, Marsden said. However, more research is needed to determine whether the technique improves patient outcomes before it can be widely used in the clinic.
This is a reposting of my Scope blog story, courtesy of Stanford School of Medicine.
Scientists Talk Funny 