Summary
I am a Senior Image Processing and Data Scientist based at the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance unit, Royal Brompton Hospital. I have a background in Physics and Mathematics, a PhD in MRI Physics (Imperial College :: London), and an extensive experience in MRI research.
Since 2012, I have been working closely with a team of physicists and clinicians in diffusion tensor cardiovascular magnetic resonance (DT-CMR). It is a novel technique for the investigation of the 3-dimensional microstructure of the heart in-vivo. We aim to improve the understanding of how the healthy heart functions as well as how microstructural dysfunction contributes to disease.
I am focused on creating specialised tools to perform data analysis, image processing, and data visualisation, with a recent interest in finding solutions with AI.
Highlights
We developed and validated a fully automated postprocessing framework for in vivo diffusion tensor cardiac magnetic resonance (DT-CMR) data powered by deep learning semantic segmentation (TensorFlow):
We published in vivo studies showing that secondary directions of diffusion align with the laminar organisation of cardiomyocytes in the heart, and that cardiomyopathy hearts present impaired mobility:
- Ferreira, P. F., Kilner, P. J., McGill, L.A., et al. In vivo cardiovascular magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging shows evidence of abnormal myocardial laminar orientations and mobility in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson (2014): 87. 2015 winner of the SCMR Gerald Pohost best manuscript award.
- Nielles-Vallespin, S., Khalique, Z., Ferreira, P. F., et al. Assessment of Myocardial Microstructural Dynamics by In Vivo Diffusion Tensor Cardiac Magnetic Resonance. J Am Coll Cardiol (2017): 661-676. 2017. Orloff Science Award (NIH, Bethesda MD, USA)
Previous academic education:
- 2005 - 2009: PhD in Myocardial Perfusion Imaging with MR, Imperial College, London, UK.
- 2004 - 2005: MSc in Medical Engineering and Physics, King’s College, University of London, UK.
- 1998 - 2004: First Degree in Physics / Applied Mathematics (Astrophysics), Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal.
Publications
Journals
Alemany I, Rose JN, Ferreira PF, et al. , 2023, Realistic numerical simulations of diffusion tensor cardiovascular magnetic resonance: The effects of perfusion and membrane permeability., Magn Reson Med, Vol:90, Pages:1641-1656
Zheng Y, Chan WX, Nielles-Vallespin S, et al. , 2023, Effects of myocardial sheetlet sliding on left ventricular function., Biomech Model Mechanobiol, Vol:22, Pages:1313-1332
Wang Y, Sun C, Ghadimi S, et al. , 2023, StrainNet: Improved Myocardial Strain Analysis of Cine MRI by Deep Learning from DENSE., Radiol Cardiothorac Imaging, Vol:5
Moulin K, Stoeck CT, Axel L, et al. , 2023, In Vivo Cardiac Diffusion Imaging Without Motion-Compensation Leads to Unreasonably High Diffusivity., J Magn Reson Imaging