‘Go with the flow’ by Victoria Stoll
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) announced the winners of its annual ?Reflections of Research? image competition, reflecting the charity?s research into heart and circulatory disease.
The winning image ? titled ?Go with the flow,? by Victoria Stoll, a BHF-funded researcher at the University of Oxford ? captures the blood flowing within an adult heart frozen in time. Blood flows within the main pumping chambers (ventricles) of the heart and the vessels leaving the heart. The blue flow is blood that lacks oxygen and is travelling to the lungs. The red flow is blood that has been through the lungs and received oxygen and is now ready to be pumped around the body.
Stoll is using this type of imaging, four-dimensional cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to look at the blood flow in four dimensions within the hearts of people with heart failure, whose hearts are not pumping effectively. She has already found that in people with severe heart failure the blood flows around the heart in a more disordered and disrupted pattern.