23 May 22. Dr Barton’s fellowship at Cedars

Congratulations to Dr Anna Barton who will joining Cedars Sinai Medical Center for a 6-month placement, applying advanced image analysis techniques to the 68Ga-FAPI PET-MR scans in the FAPI Fibrosis study.

Image
Dr Anna Barton outside the Edinburgh Imaging Facility QMRI.
Dr Anna Barton outside the Edinburgh Imaging Facility QMRI.

Dr Anna Barton is a Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science, and is currently in her second year of her PhD at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Barton’s clinical PhD focuses on the use of bespoke fibrosis PET imaging as a non-invasive method to detect myocardial fibrosis activity.

Since joining the Centre for Cardiovascular Science, Dr Barton has set up and commenced the FAPI Fibrosis Study which is enrolling patients with recent and prior established myocardial infarction to undergo 68-Gallium fibroblast activation protein inhibitor (68Ga-FAPI) PET-MR imaging at the Edinburgh Imaging Facility QMRI. As 68Ga-FAPI PET-MR is a very recent technological development and much requires to be determined around how best the resultant images should be analysed.

Dr Barton’s PhD supervisors, Professors David Newby and Marc Dweck have a longstanding close collaboration with Dr Dan Bermann, Professor of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles and Director of Cardiac Imaging at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, and his research lab.

Dr Barton will therefore visit Cedars on a 6-month placement from August 2022 with the aim of applying Dr Bernmann’s labs advanced image analysis techniques, to Dr Barton’s teams 68Ga-FAPI PET-MR scans to optimise the potential of this novel imaging approach.

Dr Barton will work with Drs Damini Dey and Piotr Slomka, the world’s leading experts in this field, and will benefit from extensive hands-on training with motion correction and quantitative analysis of PET. It is likely that this will require development of a new molecular imaging approach for assessing molecular PET in the myocardium, similar to the novel methods Dr Barton and team have developed for assessing coronary PET in collaboration between her group and Dr Bermann's lab.

 

We asked Dr Barton her thoughts on the fellowship at Cedars Sinai.

“I feel extremely privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to work within such a prestigious and world-leading cardiac imaging group as Dr Bermann's lab at Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

This placement will allow me to enhance my skills and knowledge of not only PET-MR fibrosis imaging but also a wealth of other cardiovascular imaging modalities including CMR, CT, and PET-CT.

I am also very grateful to Dr Bermann who will be funding my salary for the duration of my post in Cedars. I look forward to being able to continue and advance the strong links between our two institutions.”

 

 

Social media tags and titles

Congratulations to Dr Anna Barton who will joining Cedars Sinai Medical Center for a 6-month placement, applying advanced image analysis techniques to the 68Ga-FAPI PET-MR scans in the FAPI Fibrosis study.

@EdinUniMedicine @EdinUniCVS @EdinUniREA @TheBHF @BHFScotland @AnnaKateBarton @MarcDweck @CedarsSinai @CedarsSinaiMed