Simone Rivolo highly commended in national image competition

An image submitted by British Heart Foundation-funded researcher Simone Rivolo from the Division of Imaging Sciences & Biomedical Engineering was shortlisted in the British Heart Foundation’s annual ‘Reflections of Research’ image competition – reflecting the charity’s ground-breaking research into heart and circulatory diseases. The winning and shortlisted images from the 2015 competition were formally announced at the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) Conference on 7 June 2016.

Simone’s entry ‘Heart under pressure’ shows coronary vessels embedded within the heart muscle. These vessels play a crucial role in delivering needed oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle. What you see represented is a horizontal slice of the heart with the embedded blood vessels which were imaged and reconstructed at high resolution. The colours represent the depth in the heart wall, which is related to the compression these vessels endure throughout the cardiac cycle.  

The rhythmic contraction of the heart generates pressure and flow waves that move across the blood vessels. These waves travel much faster than the blood and they are a sort of communication system (like emails) the heart uses to understand what’s happening around it. Simone is trying to understand how the structure of the network of vessels within the heart is designed for transmitting these waves in healthy cases. This will help us to understand how the vessel structure alters the wave-propagation pattern in diseased hearts. His ultimate goal is to be able to detect early changes of this wave-propagation pattern in people for diagnostic purposes.

^{Heart under pressure by Simone Rivolo}

Simone Rivolo said: 'It was a great opportunity to showcase our work and I'm very pleased by the recognition we've received from the BHF. The ideas behind our research could be tricky to describe at times - for instance, looking at the picture, what immediately comes to my mind are the pressures, flows and the billions of waves bouncing around at each heartbeat, and not so much how remarkable it looks. I find that images are a very effective way to convey these ideas. I think it is crucial to involve the public on all the hard work done to fight heart disease. Future looks bright.'

There are an estimated 7 million people living with heart and circulatory disease in the UK. It kills around 155,000 people each year in the UK; that’s more than a quarter of all deaths.

The BHF is currently funding nearly 380 research projects at universities and hospitals across London, investigating all aspects of heart and circulatory disease. That funding is made possible by the generosity of people in the capital and the wider UK.

Reflections of Research provides a glimpse into the cutting edge research that the BHF funds. Modern technology allows scientists to image the body in unprecedented detail and provide new insights into ways to prevent and treat heart and circulatory disease.

Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the BHF and one of this year’s judges, said: ‘Science relies increasingly on ever more sophisticated imaging techniques to help us to see the cellular and molecular processes that conspire to create disease. Each of these images contains a wealth of information that scientists can use in their fight against cardiovascular disease. So whilst this competition is all about stunning imagery, it’s actually the story that the image tells that matters.’

Competition judge, artist and designer Sofie Layton said: ‘Bringing the worlds of art and science together is such a perfect way to explore the wonders of science and the extraordinary insights that we are able to witness through the technology that scientists have access to. Finding an artistic expression can make these concepts accessible to a much wider community.’

Find out more about Reflections of Research and explore the images at bhf.org.uk/reflections.