Personal Chair of Medical Physics and Biomechanics
Address
- Street
-
Queens Medical Research Institute
Edinburgh Bioquarter
47 Little France Crescent
- City
- Edinbugh
- Post code
- EH16 4TJ
Current research interests
The main focus of my work is the physics of arterial disease. Physical quantities such as blood velocity, wall shear stress and wall stiffness provide a description of the haemodynamic and mechanical environment of arteries. These physical quantities are used in improving an understanding of the function of arteries and in clinical diagnosis to predict future events such as stroke and heart attack. I use a number of different medical imaging systems to obtain data from individual patients; this data may be used in its own right or integrated with computational modelling to provide data not obtainable from medical imaging (especially on wall stress). The measurement of physical quantities must involve a consideration of measurement accuracy. For this purpose measurement errors are evaluated using experimental phantoms which simulate the key characteristics of the arteries (both mechanical and imaging properties). In addition simulation of the imaging process may be performed for the purposes of optimisation of the imaging technique. This work also falls under the general area of 'arterial biomechanics'.
