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>A new technology, 4D heart imaging, not only shows the heart in 3D showing blood flow, direction, and velocity but can also show them relating to a fourth dimension - time.

This new, 4D heart imaging technology, is fast, and requires no invasive procedures, no contrast agent or general anesthesia and could have significant consequences for patients at risk of cardiac problems.

The new heart imaging technology, developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) is known as Phase Contrast Vastly undersampled Isotropic Projection Reconstruction (PC VIPR). Dr. Oliver Wieben, a School of Medicine and Public Health medical physicist who has been working on the technology for several years, and Dr. Christopher Francois, a radiologist at the medical school who specializes in heart imaging have demonstrated their technology on hundreds of volunteers and patients, and the images have created a stir among amazed physicians and peers.

With this new, 4D heart imaging technology, the MRI scan takes only ten minutes, and while wriggly children might need to be sedated patients don't need to be absolutely still for long periods. From a short procedure scientists can produce remarkable images to measure how fast blood is flowing through various places in the heart and the major arteries around it. Blood flowing through the heart is seen as a bundle of long filaments color-coded to indicate the speed of the flow at various locations in the heart. Blue threads represent a relaxed heart with relatively slow flow such as when sleeping or at rest, while green threads indicate blood flowing faster during contraction. Red and yellow threads show abnormally fast blood flow in patients with heart problems.

In addition to this, direction of blood is depicted and the effect of any obstructions or deviations on blood flow. Scientists hope that  4D heart imaging technology could be adapted to analyze blood vessel walls as well by identifying weak areas or areas under increased stress that could lead to aneurysms or build-up of damaging plaque. This would have far-reaching effects for any patients with heart defects or at risk of cardiac problems.

"This is a new paradigm in cardiac imaging," says Francois. "It will allow physicians to see things they haven't seen before in all their complexity."

This new development could soon have significant implications for those people born with heart defects or at risk of heart problems if it is available in hospitals in only three or four years from now.

Source : SMPH

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