Creating state-of-the-art facilities to study heart function

Funds to enhance the BHF-NIHR Bloomsbury centre for clinical phenotyping (BCCP)

BHF is helping to fund an imaging centre which aims to provide state of-the-art, highly precise images to help research teams understand heart and circulatory diseases. Based at UCL, the BCCP exploits the power of advanced scanning and imaging techniques, in addition to new methods for assessing heart function in patients in a non-invasive way. A huge amount of data from UCL hospital patients will be analysed by specially adapted computers, and will be used by scientists and doctors at UCL working to treat people with heart and circulatory diseases. Funding from BHF will contribute to the equipment needed to assess heart function during exercise and when people are resting using MRI scanning techniques. The BHF will also fund analysis software to allow processing and interpretation of the heart measurements and the data created during the imaging. The BCCP addresses a pressing need for a dedicated centre to serve UCL’s growing number of clinical studies in people with heart and circulatory diseases. Together, these studies are providing new insights into heart function in people with heart and circulatory diseases.