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Guest speaker: Dr. Vanessa M. Ferreira

Deputy Clinical Director at University of Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research

About me

Professor Vanessa Ferreira is a British Heart Foundation Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Deputy Director of the Oxford Clinical Centre for Magnetic Resonance Research (OCMR) and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Radcliffe Department of Medicine. She was a board member of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (tenure 2016-2019), and serves on its Scientific Program Committee.

Prof. Ferreira obtained her Bachelor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Doctor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). She completed medical training at the University of British Columbia (Internal Medicine) and the University of Calgary (Cardiology). She subsequently obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford, and has been working at the University since.

Prof. Ferreira has expertise in the study of heart disease using CMR. Her programme of research aims to understand the pathophysiology of acute and chronic myocardial diseases, and how these may be detected using non-invasive MRI biomarkers as a basis to develop new tools for diagnosis and monitoring therapy. She has expertise in quantitative CMR techniques, such as T1- and T2- mapping. Mapping provides a quantitative way to examine the heart, and produces pixel-wise maps which give additional information compared to conventional MR images.

One of her goals is to study subclinical but important pathophysiologic processes (such as the role of diffuse myocardial fibrosis) in heart disease that contribute to increased CV risks and poor outcomes. Advanced CMR methods can assess these non-invasively, and can help us understand common and rare cardiac diseases better, to assess novel therapies, and follow disease progression/response to therapy.