Seminario 18 de Marzo 2025
Horario: 16:30 - 18:00
INTERNATIONAL INVITED SPEAKER
MARTA VARELA
Senior Lecturer in Applied Artificial Intelligence
Cardiovascular & Genomics Research Institute
City St George's, University of London
TITLE: “Unravelling the secrets of the left atrium using Physics Informed Neural Networks and MRI”
SHORT BIO: Dr Marta Varela is a Senior Lecturer in Computational Methods applied to Cardiology at St George’s University of London. Marta has a PhD in MRI Physics and extensive research experience creating computational and artificial intelligence (AI) methods to improve the understanding and treatment of cardiovascular conditions. These include computational tools to test the efficacy of anti-arrhythmic drugs and fast 3D MRI scans to characterise cardiac motion and deformations.
Marta is particularly interested in applying physics-informed machine learning to address clinical problems. She has created physics-informed neural networks to quantify the electrical properties of the heart using small amounts of data and characterise brain perfusion.
iHEALTH SPEAKER
MARÍA CRISTINA JIMÉNEZ
PhD Student in Sciences and Engineering for Health
Facultad de Medicina
Universidad de Valparaíso
TITLE: "Intracardiac biomarkers in patients with heart diseases using 4D Flow MRI and myocardial perfusion, utilizing radiomics and artificial intelligence"
ABSTRACT: In recent years, cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) has become a crucial tool for evaluating myocardial damage caused by coronary artery disease (CAD), offering in-depth insights into cardiac anatomy, function, tissue characterization, flow measurement, and the assessment of coronary arteries. Advanced CMR techniques, including parametric mapping, myocardial strain, and four-dimensional flow (4D Flow), allow for a comprehensive evaluation of cardiac injury and remodeling. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in CMR image analysis has significantly enhanced diagnostic precision and optimized clinical workflows. AI methods, leveraging machine learning and deep learning, improve automatic cardiac segmentation, volume assessment, parametric mapping, myocardial scar detection, and flow quantification, achieving accuracy levels similar to those of skilled radiologists and cardiologists. Radiomics further supports AI by extracting complex image patterns that are often difficult for the human eye to detect.
In this talk, I will focus on the AI applications described in the literature for the analysis of CMR images, as well as the application of 4D Flow CMR in patients with CAD. Additionally, I will discuss the analysis of radiomic parameters in cardiac perfusion images and their relationship with the extent of ischemic damage in patients with CAD, which we are conducting.
SHORT BIO: María Cristina is a Veterinarian from Universidad de La Salle, holds a Master’s degree in Veterinary Sciences from Universidad de Chile, and is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in Health Sciences and Engineering at Universidad de Valparaíso.
Her research focuses on cardiovascular hemodynamics, applying 4D Flow MRI, myocardial perfusion analysis, radiomics, and artificial intelligence to identify intracardiac biomarkers in patients with heart disease. Through advanced computational modeling and medical imaging techniques, she aims to enhance the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of ischemic heart disease.
