Case Western receives $1.1M to research new peripheral artery disease imaging method
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland announced it has received a three-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research a novel imaging technique for diagnosing peripheral arterial disease, according to a university release.
More than 200 million worldwide suffer from the disease. The NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute grant will focus on eliminating the need for gadolinium-based contrast agents in imaging techniques such as CT angiography and contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (MRA).
Contrast agents cannot typically be used in chronic kidney disease patients, a growing problem in the U.S., according to the director of the research, Sanjay Rajagopalan, MD, and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Medicine.
“A non-contrast-enhanced MRA would be ideal in such patients and certainly has demonstrated promising results,” Rajagopalan said in the statement. “However, current MRA methods have problems that limit their widespread clinical applicability, including undesired suppression of signals, making the blockage look worse than it is.”
The investigation will focus on velocity-selective magnetization, which magnetically labels blood flow and creates corresponding images of the target tissue to produce clear images of blood vessels without dye.
Research and methods developed in the project will also translate to other procedures such as venography, vessel wall imaging and perfusion imaging.
Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.