Food for thought: Oxygen delivery to the brain

Project summary

Cerebral hypoxia is a devastating pathophysiological state that occurs in a plethora of diseases, including stroke and brain tumours. The processes leading to and following from hypoxia are variable and hereby important factors in treatment strategies. However, despite the dramatic impact of cerebral hypoxia, no rapid assessment of hypoxia across the whole brain is available in the clinic because of the complex interplay of processes involved in oxygen delivery. Therefore, I aim to create and validate a new framework for measuring oxygen delivery to the human brain that can be applied clinically with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

My project will lead to a new oxygen delivery framework that provides imaging biomarkers to aid diagnosis, treatment planning, and follow-up of cerebral hypoxia in pathology, and will be an important tool for in vivo research into the processes leading to cerebral hypoxia.