Visiting Lecturer Series – Dr. Graham Wright

MRI for Ventricular Arrhythmia Management

Lecture Takeaways

The main takeaways are as follows:

• Ventricular arrhythmias are a leading cause of sudden cardiac death. Implantable cardiac defibrillators can improve outcomes, while arrhythmia substrate ablation is potentially curative but remains associated with high recurrence rates.
• MRI has demonstrated promise in characterizing arrhythmia substrates, better identifying those at increased risk for events and determining targets for ablative therapies.
• MRI can also effectively delineate ablation lesions, providing the potential to better assess treatment efficacy acutely.

Biography

Dr. Graham A. Wright, PhD, is a Senior Scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute, a Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, and the Canada Research Chair in Imaging for Cardiovascular Therapeutics.

The research focus of Dr. Wright’s group is cardiovascular imaging, with an emphasis on MRI. This effort includes basic biophysics to characterize the relationship between MR signals and underlying pathophysiology in blood and tissue; engineering to develop more effective methods and devices to acquire, analyze, and visualize medical images; and application of these tools to assessment, treatment planning, and therapy guidance in ischemic and structural heart diseases, complex arrhythmias, and peripheral vascular diseases.

Together with trainees and collaborators, he has published over 235 peer-reviewed papers and 545 conference abstracts, which have garnered numerous awards and resulted in 25 patents. Dr. Wright collaborates with a broad range of companies in translating research results toward clinical practice.

No sign-up is required. For more information, contact the iBEST coordinator at ibest@torontomu.ca.