The Problem
Stroke is the second cause of death in developed countries, and 1/3 of them are caused by the formation of a thrombus inside the cardiac chambers. Intracardiac flow arrangement inside the heart plays an essential role in thrombosis. However, there is a lack of applied clinical tools allowing an appropriate characterization of flow phenomena inside the cardiac chambers.
Mision & Vision
We believe that an extensive analysis of intracardiac flow will provide more sensitive and specific information to predict the risk of cardiac embolism than current applied methods. This approach will help a personalized stratification and the clinical management of patients at risk of embolism, improving the decision-make process while prescribing anticoagulation therapy.
Collaboration
Real advances in clinical research will only be accomplished through collaboration. Thus, to guarantee the success of PREFICM, we have assembled a multidisciplinary team of experts in physics, engineering and cardiology of 5 different research institutions.
Flow simulations from CT imaging.
We simulate flow inside the heart of each patient using CT scan images. The process is simple:
