Center for Biomedical Image Computing and Analytics (CBICA) Seminar

Alison Pouch
Assistant Professor of Radiology and Bioengineering
University of Pennsylvania

via Bluejeans: https://bluejeans.com/3187722106

Echocardiographic Insights into Aortic Root Dynamics and Implications for Surgical Therapy of Congenital Bicuspid Aortic Valves

The bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a congenital heart defect in which the aortic valve has two cusps rather than three. Aortic regurgitation and ascending aortic aneurysm are common complications in young adult BAV patients and require major surgical intervention. However, there are several knowledge gaps and limited surgical planning tools related to these interventions. In particular, there is limited knowledge about cyclic aortic root deformation in the setting of a BAV and how it differs from physiologically normal trileaflet aortic root dynamics during the cardiac cycle. In this talk, we will discuss 3D and 4D computational image analysis methodologies that we are developing to gain new insights into aortic root dynamics, including a new publicly available tool for assessing aortic root strain in echocardiography and other 4D imaging modalities. These methodologies enable quantification of metrics that have potential to improve our understanding of BAV-related aortopathy and regurgitation, and thereby guide decision-making about the timing of surgical intervention.

Bio

Alison Pouch, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Radiology and Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She leads a computational image analysis research group in the Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory (PICSL), focused on image-based guidance for heart valve surgery and 3D shape modeling for the Penn Tissue Mapping Center. Dr. Pouch is a graduate of the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Ph.D. Program in Biomedical Imaging and Informational Sciences at Penn and completed post-doctoral training in heart valve research in the Department of Surgery. Her work has been funded by the American Heart Association (predoctoral), the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (postdoctoral F32 NRSA and mentored career development K01), and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for Essential Open Source Software for Science. Dr. Pouch leads the Bioengineering graduate course Principles of Medical Imaging and enjoys teaching about medical imaging in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Perelman School of Medicine.