Heart Failure Research
Dr. Tom Denney in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is collaborating with Dr. Lou Dell'Italia in the Center for Heart Failure Research at UAB and Dr. Ray Dillon at the Auburn University CVM on a Specialized Center for Clinically Oriented Research (SCCOR) grant from the NIH. The purpose of the project is to study the fundamental causes and assess therapies for three types of heart disease: hypertension, mitral valve regurgitation, and diabetes with myocardial infarction (heart attacks). All patients enrolled in this project are currently imaged with MRI at UAB. Dogs are imaged with MRI at both the CVM and UAB. Dr. Denney is the director of the imaging core, which is responsible for analyzing all MRI image data in the project to measure parameters of cardiac shape and function.
Dr. Denney is developing cardiac MRI analysis techniques in three areas: 1) leveraging the user interaction involved in cardiac MRI analysis to obtain additional clinically-relevant parameters; 2) computing accurate measurements of myocardial strain from standard cine MRI; and 3) designing analysis techniques specifically for measuring right ventricular function.
