Aichi Chien, PhD

‌Each person has their own set of brain vasculature characteristics; however, these characteristics might change or be influenced by age, behaviors like smoking, or adverse events such as neurovasculature infection.  Variations can be also caused by sex, ethnicity, or genetic attributes. There are many brain vascular diseases, which may be related to these vasculature characteristics. Different types of characteristics may influence each other, such as blood flow affecting vascular shape, which in turn will affect blood flow. By comparing these different characteristics within a population, we hope to find variations that relate to why some people are more likely to have certain diseases. These diseases include brain aneurysms and other types of stroke. 
 

Chien's laboratory looks into these tiny differences between people to find associations with certain medical conditions. Then we develop computational tools for individualized diagnoses, treatment planning, and device evaluation. These are all based on the computational analysis of patient medical images. We use shape and hemodynamic analysis, with machine learning neural networks to unfold these questions. The tools that are developed here can also be useful for other diseases and organ analysis, such as the liver, and heart. Early diagnosis and treatment planning for improving brain vasculature health can be derived from this information and can also be used to create an individualized vascular health profile. This profile can then provide comprehensive brain vascular health updates.