A total of 16 heavy-projects, the original
51, had qualified for Stage 2 of the announcement. The assessment team stayed
for six projects. The requested amount for the six projects was in excess of 33
million. At the final assessment was modified to 26.5 million. Among six the
second project is:

Visualization of complex blood flows

Einar Heiberg, PhD

Department of Clinical Physiology,
Clinical Sciences,

Lund University

2 550 000 SEK

Intracardiac blood flow in humans is not
yet completely understood. The blood flow is highly complex and asymmetrical. In
recent research it has been both proposed and disputed that the human heart
Conserve energy by Arranging flow in vortices and separated streams. One
technique Thursday depict this complex flow is three-dimensional time-resolved
velocity imaging using magnetic resonance imaging. However, three dimensional
cardiovascular velocity mapping has not been adopted clinically, and only
scarcely in applied physiology research. This can be attributed to the lack of
adequate tools for visualization and quantification, and current techniques
leave much Thursday desire, especially in the sense that they are not
quantitative. The challenge of intuitive and quantitative visualization remains
to be solved. A completed project will enable true clinical use of three
dimensional intracardiac blood flow visualization. Releasing the source code of
the visualization software will enable this powerful technique and important
research applications so that the technique when further explored and refined
can take the step from a research tool available at only a few selected places
in the world Thursday something that can be used in the clinical routine for
patients. If the project is granted, Sweden and the applicants will become world
leading in the emerging field of quantitative intracardiac visualization.