Cardiac MR Group

Hjärt-MR-gruppen

The Cardiac MR Group (LUCRIS link) performs research, teaching and clinical diagnostics at the Center for Medical Imaging and Physiology, Department of Clinical Physiology at Lund University and Skåne University Hospital, Lund.

Under the leadership of Professor Håkan Arheden MD, PhD [Publications] and senior researchers Professor Anthony Aletras [Publications], Assoc Prof Marcus Carlsson [Publications], Assoc Prof Einar Heiberg [Publications], Assoc Prof Henrik Engblom [Publications], Assoc Prof Erik Hedström [Publications], Ellen Ostenfeld MD, PhD [Publications], Jonas Jögi MD, PhD [Publications] and Assoc Prof Katarina Steding-Ehrenborg [Publications], the group works together with cardiologists, thoracic surgeons, clinical physiogists, radiologists, physicists, mathematicians and programmers.

Portrait of Professor Hakan Arheden — Professor Håkan Arheden

Lund University Hospital is the largest center in Scandinavia for cardiac MRI in patients. The Cardiac MR Group at the Department of Clinical Physiology consists of physicians, engineers, technicians and a physiotherapist. The multidisciplinary composition of the group is essential when performing research in the field of cardiac MRI.

The senior engineer, Associate Professor Einar Heiberg, has developed a widely used software for image analysis which is continuously adapted for the research needs of the group. The Cardiac MR group closely collaborates with researchers in the MR physics group and researchers at the department of cardiology (group Erlinge, group Magnusson), experimental vascular research (group Gomez), pediatric cardiology, obstetrics (group Hansson), internal medicine and rheumathology. The Cardiac MR group collaborates with researchers at Duke University, Durham, UCSF, San Francisco, Washington University, St. Louis, University of Thessaly, University of Glasgow, and University of Oslo.

Magnetic resonance image of the heart in a so called three-chamber view. — MR image shows the pumping of the heart

For more than 10 years, a central theme for the research pursued by the Cardiac MR group has been the pathophysiological mechanisms associated with acute myocardial infarction, including quantitative assessments of infarct size, myocardium at risk and, consequently, myocardial salvage. One of the seminal articles generated from this work was awarded the prize “Editor´s pick of 2009” in JCMR. The validation of quantitative perfusion with CMR with PET was awarded “Editor´s pick of 2017” in JCMR.

The work on cardiac pumping using cardiac MRI was awarded the Crafoord prize for best thesis at Faculty of Medicine, Lund University 2007. Our research also includes patients with congenital heart disease, athletes and patients with heart failure including pulmonary hypertension.

Visualization and image analysis is a core research focus within the Cardiac MR group with four PhD students and three post doctoral fellows working on four-dimensional flow, segmentation of cardic imaging and quantification of myocardial SPECT. This part of the group is supervised by Einar Heiberg.

The following two videos show one such novel visualization technique, in a healthy volunteer and in a patient with heart failure.