Understanding lung and vascular shape change during breathing

The relationship between changes in pulmonary vascular (vessel) structures and pulmonary diseases is not well understood. Increased pulmonary vascular volume has been observed in patients with interstitial lung diseases on computed tomography (CT) imaging, while reduced vascular volume was seen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. However, to better understand what happens to the vasculature with pulmonary diseases, we must first investigate how the vasculature changes in a healthy lung during normal breathing.

MRI is a non-ionising radiation imaging modality and therefore it is ideally suited for repeated imaging of healthy participants. This project aims to use lung MRI to investigate the impact of lung inflation volume on the pulmonary vascular structures and lung shape. This will be a multi-faceted project that involves quantitative image analysis, software development and computational modelling.

Specific aims include:

1. Develop an MRI image-analysis workflow to segment lung shape and vasculature and derive a statistical shape model of the lung.
2. Create patient-specific computational models of pulmonary perfusion.
3. Spatially co-register the models at different lung inflation to investigate perfusion change during breathing.
4. Develop a 3D app to visualise the dynamic changes in pulmonary vessels over time.

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Physics or equivalent.

• Experience in medical imaging, image processing, mathematical modelling and application development would be desirable.
  

Aotearoa Fellowship

Page expires: 17 October 2024