Colloquium: Alison Pouch

On Friday, March 18 at 2:00 in the large conference room, PICS will present a colloquium featuring Professor Alison Pouch.

Title: Computational Image Analysis For Individualized Surgical Treatment Planning of Bicuspid Aortic Valves

Abstract:

The bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a congenital heart defect in which the aortic valve has two cusps rather than three. Moderate to severe aortic regurgitation is the most common complication in young adult BAV patients and requires major, and often repeated, surgical intervention. BAV repair is an evolving surgical treatment for aortic regurgitation that preserves native valve tissue and circumvents risks and quality of life concerns associated with conventional aortic valve replacement in young adults. Despite promising clinical studies, however, BAV repair remains underutilized and there is substantial variability in surgical planning across institutions. In this talk, we discuss 3D and 4D computational image analysis methodologies that we are developing to gain new insights into valvular regurgitation and surgical treatment of the disease. These methodologies enable pre-operative visualization of valve morphology and motion, as well as automated quantification of metrics that are used to decide which surgical strategy is optimal for a patient’s valve. We will discuss how the advancement of image analysis, applied to modalities such as echocardiography and computed tomography, provides unique opportunities to standardize the surgical planning process and increase the utilization of repair as an alternative to valve replacement in young adults.

Bio: Alison Pouch, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Radiology and Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She leads a computational image analysis research group in the Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory (PICSL), focused on image-based guidance for heart valve surgery and 3D shape modeling for the Penn Tissue Mapping Center. Dr. Pouch is a graduate of the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Ph.D. Program in Biomedical Imaging and Informational Sciences at Penn and completed post-doctoral training in heart valve research in the Department of Surgery. As an early career investigator, her work has been funded by the American Heart Association (predoctoral), the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (postdoctoral F32 NRSA and mentored career development K01), and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for Essential Open Source Software for Science. Dr. Pouch leads the Bioengineering graduate course Principles of Medical Imaging and enjoys teaching about medical imaging in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Perelman School of Medicine.