Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) alters pulmonary hemodynamics by changing the vascular wall mechanics. Currently, pulmonary vascular resistance is used clinically to assess the disease. However, the invasive nature of pressure measurements, needed for calculating the resistance, prevents longitudinal monitoring of patients during therapy. This work employs wave reflection as an alternative measure of the downstream stiffness and proposes a new method for wave reflection assessment using only non-invasive phase contrast magnetic resonance (PCMR) flow data. The feasibility of the proposed method was investigated in a numerical model of blood flow in the right pulmonary artery. Furthermore, it was validated experimentally using a flow phantom and compared with an existing invasive technique. Finally, the feasibility of the method was tested in a study of the right pulmonary artery of a volunteer. This approach may provide a non-invasive method to evaluate PAH and its response to therapy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/32132 |
| Date | 16 February 2012 |
| Creators | Fazelpour, Sina |
| Contributors | Macgowan, Christopher K. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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