Vanessa Ferreira
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine; Honorary Consultant Cardiologist; Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall
Professor Vanessa Ferreira is a British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, and teaches Somerville students as a Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer.
Professor Vanessa Ferreira has expertise in the study of heart disease using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). Her doctorate research in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford focused on CMR myocardial tissue characterisation, converging with MR physics technical development towards clinical translation of myocardial T1-mapping. Briefly, each tissue type in the body has a magnetic property called T1 relaxation time, which can be measured (in milliseconds) using MRI scans. The heart has a specific range of normal T1 values, deviation from which may be indicative of disease. T1-mapping generates a pixel-by-pixel T1-map of the heart, which can locate small areas of disease in a numerical manner. Thus, T1-mapping provides a quantitative way to examine the heart, does not require any injection of contrast agents or radiation, and produces coloured MRI images which give additional information compared to traditional MR images.
One of her goals is to advance CMR methods to gain more insight into heart disease in ways not previously possible, in a non-invasive way. Another is to minimise the need for injection of contrast agents for diagnostic images, allowing more patients to benefit from cardiac MRI, eliminating adverse reactions to contrast agents, and savings in time and cost.
Working with MR physicists, engineers, biomedical imaging experts and clinician-scientists from a range of specialties, Vanessa’s research at the OCMR is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary. Vanessa also delivers CMR education, and supervises DPhil, MSc and medical students in CMR research at the OCMR, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
Publications
Messroghli, D.R., Moon, J.C., Ferreira, V.M. et al. Clinical recommendations for cardiovascular magnetic resonance mapping of T1, T2, T2* and extracellular volume: A consensus statement by the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) endorsed by the European Association for Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI). J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 19, 75 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12968-017-0389-8
Piechnik, S.K., Ferreira, V.M., Dall’Armellina, E. et al. Shortened Modified Look-Locker Inversion recovery (ShMOLLI) for clinical myocardial T1-mapping at 1.5 and 3 T within a 9 heartbeat breathhold. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 12, 69 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-12-69
Theodoros D. Karamitsos, Stefan K. Piechnik, Sanjay M. Banypersad, Marianna Fontana, Ntobeko B. Ntusi, Vanessa M. Ferreira, Carol J. Whelan, Saul G. Myerson, Matthew D. Robson, Philip N. Hawkins, Stefan Neubauer, James C. Moon,
Noncontrast T1 Mapping for the Diagnosis of Cardiac Amyloidosis,
JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging,
Volume 6, Issue 4,
2013,
Pages 488-497,
ISSN 1936-878X,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcmg.2012.11.013
Vanessa M. Ferreira, Jeanette Schulz-Menger, Godtfred Holmvang, Christopher M. Kramer, Iacopo Carbone, Udo Sechtem, Ingrid Kindermann, Matthias Gutberlet, Leslie T. Cooper, Peter Liu, Matthias G. Friedrich,
Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in Nonischemic Myocardial Inflammation: Expert Recommendations,
Journal of the American College of Cardiology,
Volume 72, Issue 24,
2018,
Pages 3158-3176,
ISSN 0735-1097,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2018.09.072.
Ferreira, V.M., Piechnik, S.K., Dall’Armellina, E. et al. Non-contrast T1-mapping detects acute myocardial edema with high diagnostic accuracy: a comparison to T2-weighted cardiovascular magnetic resonance. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 14, 42 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-14-42