Project Background
Intracardiac blood flow in humans is not yet completely understood. The blood flow is highly complex and asymmetrical. In recent research it has both been proposed and disputed that the human heart conserves energy by arranging flow in vortices and separated streams. One technique to depict this complex flow is three-dimensional time resolved velocity imaging using magnetic resonance imaging, which has been available for a little more than 10 years.
However, three dimensional cardiovascular velocity mapping has not been adopted clinically, and only scarcely in applied physiology research. This can be attributed to the lack of adequate tools for visualization and quantification. Current visualization techniques leave much to desire, especially in the sense that they are not quantitative. The challenge of intuitive and quantitative visualization remains to be solved. Current methods produce intriguing images, but no numerical results that summarize the physiology. Quantitative visualization is necessary in order to be able to make clinical decisions based on three dimensional flow. For example, should we operate or not? Saying "it looks like it is time to operate" is simply not good enough. Numbers are needed.
Therefore, the aim of this project is to develop a clinically applicable and user friendly open source software for quantitative visualization of blood flow within the heart.
