Description

Noninvasive cardiac imaging has rapidly evolved over the last decades. Owing to numerous innovations, multimodality cardiac imaging allows nowadays, reliable diagnosis, risk stratification, planning and monitoring of therapeutic interventions for all major cardiac diseases.

The research focus of our group at SITEM/TIC is on clinical and translational projects using latest noninvasive multimodality imaging technologies. We investigate the application of translating imaging into 3D printed patient specific multimaterial models, using voxelprinting to simulate different conditions in valvular heart disease and hemodynamics in patients with coronary artery disease and those with coronary artery anomalies (i.e. SNF funded project: NARCO trial).

A study including patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (HOPP-Bern trial) will provide insights on the development of cardiac and vascular function (strain analysis) and aortic 4D flow. In addition, we actively investigate inflammatory cardiomyopathies (i.e. cardiac sarcoidosis and peri-myocarditis) with the aim to improve early diagnosis and risk stratification by applying Artificial Intelligence/ Radiomics, and using tissue characterization (depicting fibrosis with Late Gadolinium Enhancement, T1 mapping, extracellular volume fraction and edema imaging) as well as novel post-processing myocardial feature tracking strain analysis using cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (i.e. FlamBer registry).

Similarly, we aim to improve the non-invasive diagnosis of infiltrative cardiomyopathies such as cardiac amyloidosis (i.e. B-CARE trial) to obtain a better understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment response to novel therapies. A SNF funded research project (PRE-MITRA) assesses parameters in cardiac magnetic resonance imaging to predict benefit in patients with severe mitral valve regurgitation who are undergoing edge-to-edge mitral valve repair.