Pulmonary Hypertension

Pulmonary Hypertension

Researchers: Ing. Guillermo Valentín Socorro Marrero, B.Sc. (GTMA), José Carlos Ruiz Luque, Ph.D. (GTMA) and Prof. Juan Ruiz Alzola, Ph.D. (ULPGC-IAC-GTMA).

Summary

In search of new imaging biomarkers for pulmonary hypertension.

Pulmonary Hypertension

Pulmonary hypertension is a pathology characterized by a significant increase in blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries. Although its incidence in the population is low, its prognosis is usually poor, especially at the stages in which it is diagnosed. In addition, it is not infrequent for young people to be affected, with a higher incidence in women, and this has aroused the interest of the scientific community in the development of strategies to speed up diagnosis and improve predictability in the evolution of patients.

The starting point of this project is the work carried out at the Harvard Medical School in Boston –partner institution of the MACbioIDi project– by the researchers Raúl San José Estepar, Ph.D., and Jorge Onieva Onieva, M.Sc. in the context of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Their team has developed and integrated in 3D Slicer the Chest Imaging Platform () which provides a whole set of tools for computed tomography image analysis, including modules for lung segmentation and vessel and airway reconstruction. It also helps to extract characteristics of the pulmonary vasculature (phenotyping).

This new project, which focuses on pulmonary hypertension, is aimed at analysing its specific radiological manifestations, especially in computed tomography, in order to identify new biomarkers based on images. These indicators will be obtained from the phenotyping functions available in the IPC or versions of them adapted to the singularities of pulmonary hypertension. The new biomarkers are expected to aid in the diagnosis and prognosis of this pathology.