Q&A with Alireza Vali and Susanne Schnell

In today’s interview, we discuss the latest paper by Alireza Vali and Susanne Schnell from the Department of Radiology at Northwestern University in Chicago. Their paper presents a semi-automated analysis pipeline of 4D flow MRI, which has been used to assess the hemodynamic impact of intracranial atherosclerotic disease

For those who would like to get a quick overview of our discussion, below is an annotation of the interview. Clicking on the timestamp will take you to the exact video location where the topic is discussed.

00:26: Audioslides: Alireza provides a 5 min presentation of their semi-automated analysis pipeline of 4D flow MRI and how it was used to assess the hemodynamic impact of intracranial atherosclerotic disease.

06:58: Backgrounds: Alireza completed his PhD in mechanical engineering and, in 2015 began working on 4D flow MRI. He then joined the Department of Radiology of Northwestern University where Susanne is an assistant professor.

09:06: Asked if they are planning to share their 4D flow MRI, Alizera and Susanne acknowledged the importance of making these tools publicly available and intend to discuss it further with their collaborators.

10:23: The authors expanded on the use of their pipeline. The quality of the images and pre-processing are key for the 4D flow MRI post-processing to work. Another thing to note is that segmenting the vasculature is very important and a tricky part of the pipeline, therefore it must be done carefully. Finally, as with any automated tool, the results should be cautiously inspected and manually corrected if needed.

13:15: This tool was applied to characterize the hemodynamic impact of intracranial atherosclerotic disease. The authors were surprised by the pressure drop (PD) results between patients with severe and moderate stenosis.

15:20: Other potential applications of this pipeline could be to study flow MRI in other areas in the body such as the liver.