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Combating a silent killer
Combining computer technology and neurological expertise, doctors from Inova Fairfax Hospital and George Mason University are on track to improve treatment for millions of people around the world suffering from brain aneurysms.
There are few symptoms for an aneurysm, a pocket of blood that builds in blood vessels near the brain. In many instances, a perfectly healthy person will go about his or her life normally before an aneurysm bursts and the victim has a hemorrhagic stroke and dies on the spot.
Patients are currently treated after arteries are filled with a dye and then X-rayed. Those pictures are then viewed and a decision is made for treatment.
With the new technology, as many as 300 images of the brain are taken in an X-ray tube surrounding the patient. The images can then be used to create a computerized, three-dimensional picture of the aneurysm, a process similar to the sweeping camera special effects seen in movies like the “The Matrix.”
Reported ruptured aneurysms occur in around 10 of every 100,000 people in this country per year, most commonly to those between 30 and 60 years old, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“In the past, you could only see an aneurysm and measure volume size, location in the artery and so on. But now we can measure pressure distribution, velocity distribution of the blood flow, regions of stagnant flow, frictional forces on arterial walls. All these variables can help you” personalize treatment for individual cases, said Dr. Juan Cebral of the George Mason University Center for Computational Fluid Dynamics.
Five years ago, Cebral began work on the blood flow simulation system with Dr. Chris Putman, Director of the Interventional Neuroradiology Unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital. The research has been fully funded for the next four years.
A database of 300 aneurysm images from patients has already been collected for the project, with a goal of several thousand to be compiled within a year.
The pair is working to present their research to the NIH for mass distribution in the next two years, and then “the plan is to introduce it to several centers around the world,” Putman said.
The system changes the basis of a doctor's decision from a judgment call to a precise measurement. “It's more consistent in the long run,” Putman said.
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