During the past year we have continued our work applying rapid MRI to guide simple and complex mechanical and biological interventions.? ? We are developing clinical-grade catheter devices to recanalize chronic total occlusions of peripheral arteries. These should be ready for clinical testing next year. Other catheter devices also are under development for real-time MRI procedures in animals.? ? We are developing catheter-based mitral annuloplasty to treat functional mitral valve regurgitation. We have had preliminary success in porcine models of mitral valve regurgitation.? ? We have developed methods to combine or fuse prior MRI-derived regions of interest with real-time X-ray during preclinical and clinical catheter-based procedures. For example, our X-ray Fused with MRI (XFM) system facilitated precise injections to myocardial targets under X-ray fluroscopy. We plan further development of these technologies to facilitate widespread deployment.? ? Clinical studies are about to begin conducting human peripheral artery intervention wholly using real-time MRI, and stenting of aortic coarctation in humans wholly using real-time MRI. Clinical enrollment continues in a human gene transfer experiment for therapeutic angiogenesis using a novel transcriptional upregulator; the trial will test safety as well as MRI assessment of efficacy.
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