MR Turbulence Angiography: A Novel Approach for Rapid Quantification and Visualization of Turbulent Cardiovascular Blood Flow

Turbulent blood flow is a hallmark of cardiovascular diseases such as heart valve stenosis and regurgitation.

A clinical method that can visualize and quantify turbulence in cardiovascular blood flow would open up for earlier detection and improved diagnosis of several cardiovascular diseases. Unfortunately, current clinical methods have limited abilities in measuring turbulence.

The purpose of this project is to enable rapid quantification and visualization of turbulence in cardiovascular blood flow by developing a novel method termed MR turbulence angiography.

This will be achieved by developing 1) a highly undersampled data acquisition approach optimized for turbulent flow conditions in combination with state-of-the-art k-space reconstruction and a novel flow-guided reconstruction strategy and 2) automated quantification and visualization of turbulence in all cardiac chambers and major vessels based on deep-learning segmentation.

The developed MR turbulence angiography method will be evaluated in 200 patients with aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation, so as to optimize and establish the reliability of the technical developments in relevant patient groups.

Successful accomplishment of this project will offer a new paradigm in the evaluation of several cardiovascular diseases by rapidly quantifying and visualizing turbulent blood flow. This will improve diagnosis and impact the management of patients with several forms of cardiovascular disease.