Events Calendar

Seminar in Biomedical Engineering

Speaker: Brian Ziyue Wu, Grodins Graduate Award & Coulter Award Winner (BME PhD Candidate), BME PhD Candidate, member of the Magnetic Resonance Engineering Lab at USC

Talk Title: "Seeing Sleep: Real-time MRI Methods for the Evaluation of Sleep Apnea"

Abstract: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a largely neglected disease which can lead to serous consequences. It is characterized by repetitive upper airway (UA) collapse during sleep. Current gold standard of diagnosing sleep apnea is an overnight polysomnography, from which an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) is derived to indicate the severity of apnea. However, lack of direct anatomical information often limits the value of such sleep studies. UA compliance, (ratio of UA cross-sectional area and pressure), has been proposed to measure airway collapsibility and requires an imaging tool. MRI is a noninvasive technique to measure the cross-sectional area and has many advantages compared to other imaging modalities. But it is fundamentally limited by acquisition speed. Here we present a novel real-time method, which synergistically combines several acceleration techniques including parallel imaging, radial trajectory, compressed sensing and multiband acquisition. We are able to simultaneously acquire four axial airway sites with 90 ms and 1mm resolution, a 33-fold acceleration compared to conventional MRI. Our results show for the first time that a narrower airway site is not always easier to collapse. These findings have the potential to impact future OSA surgical planning.

Host: Stanley Yamashiro

Location: OHE 122

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta