The CORDA Donald Longmore PhD Fellowship

Right Ventricle Modelling

Imaging science is a major field of research at Imperial College London and the Hamlyn Centre is literally at the heart of it.

One of the major focuses of the Centre is in developing imaging techniques for the early detection of coronary artery disease, which remains the major cause of mortality and morbidity in the industrialised world despite significant advances in its prevention - 250,000 people die from heart attacks a day.

The heart charity CORDA has been funding a PhD fellowship at the Hamlyn Centre for developing novel cardiovascular magnetic imaging techniques for both anatomical and functional assessment of the coronary arteries. The CORDA Donald Longmore PhD Fellowship is to honour the contribution of one of the CORDA founders, Professor Donald Longmore for his pioneering effort in cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging. The research fellow, Lichao Wang, now in his final year of PhD is developing statistical shape modelling schemes combined with reinforcement learning for better differentiation of cardiovascular anatomies.

In commenting his experience studying at the Hamlyn Centre, Lichao said:

“As a computing scientist, I have benefited immensely from working closely with clinical imaging scientists, cardiologists and physicists. This multidisciplinary environment focussed on direct translation of new technologies for the benefit of patients has helped me defining my life-long career goal. This also makes me proud that I can play an active role in realising CORDA’s vision of preventing heart disease and stroke using non-invasive diagnosis and treatment.”  

CORDA, the Latin word for ‘hearts’, was established in 1976 with the mission to advance the development of new imaging and therapeutic techniques for the prevention of heart disease and stroke. The next CORDA Donald Longmore PhD Fellow will start from 2012 with a focus on rapid imaging techniques for image guided endovascular interventions.  

Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, director of the Hamlyn Centre said:

“It is a great honour to receive continued funding from CORDA. The impact of heart disease and stroke can be felt globally as it accounts for 30% of all deaths. However, low- and middle-income countries are disproportionally affected with over 80% of cardiovascular deaths occurring there. Fellowships as such will help us cultivate a new generation of talented young scientists for improving the quality of diagnosis and lower the cost of care through technological innovation and encourage them to use this as their life-long career goal. We are very grateful that CORDA are funding our research.”