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News

UH prof finds way to predict strokes

University, Methodist Hospital partnership focuses on aneurysms

By Tina Marie Macias 
Senior Staff Writer

Researchers from UH and The Methodist Hospital may have found a way to detect aneurysms before they create strokes, the result of two years' worth of work.

Mechanical engineering professor Ralph Metcalfe and Methodist Hospital neuroradiologist Charles Strother focus on aneurysms, weak spots in the walls of blood vessels in the brain that can cause strokes or death. Methodist researchers inject a dye into the brain to follow aneurysms as they travel through blood vessels, letting doctors take brain scans of the dye activity.

UH professors have built on that process, developing technology that can calculate the speed and force of the blood using computer simulations of the blood flow.

"(Methodist Hospital doctors) get geometric information about the patients' cerebral arteries (and) they send it to us," Metcalfe said. "We can put that in the computer ... and then we actually perform simulations of blood flow in that specific patient's arteries."

The simulations can help show how blood flows through the vessel, Metcalfe said, and researchers can compare its behavior to a site where an aneurysm formed. Their goal is to use the technology to detect aneurysms before they cause strokes, he said.

"Ultimately, we hope to refine this and improve it so we can get better (and) we can predict where (aneurysms) occur," Metcalfe said. 

If an aneurysm is found early, neuroradiologists can isolate it before it gets worse, Strother said.

Although he said it is too soon to know whether the technology can help individual patients, Strother hopes it will help researchers understand how aneurysms form and find ways to prevent strokes and death. 

"This can help us better understand how aneurysms form, how they grow and how they rupture," Strother said.
 

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