The annual BHF CRE Symposium on 10 November 2021 played host to the inaugural BHF CRE Image Competion, this year themed "From Bench to Bedside".
A panel of judges taken from across the CRE themes judged entries, and awarded the judges' choice prize. Remaining entries were then shown to symposium attendees on the day, who voted online for the audience's choice prize.
We're delighted announce that Dr Hasan Mohiaddin of the Neubauer group won the judges’ choice prize for his striking MRI mosaic image "The Avatars of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Cornavirus-2 (SARS-Cov-2)" (see above).
Generated by his group’s research into the effects of moderate-severe Covid-19 infection, he described his image as follows: “On the outset, it may resemble a virus, but in fact, this depiction of SARS-CoV-2 is a mosaic of magnetic resonance images obtained from patients recovering from moderate to severe COVID-19 with evidence of multiorgan inflammation. The heart (nucleocapsid) of the virus is made of cross-sectional images of human hearts from survivors of COVID-19. The spike proteins are depicted by damaged kidneys, which are vulnerable to infection because of an abundance of receptors on its surface for this protein. The outer membrane of the virus is made up of lung and liver images of affected individual. The varying colours represent the powerful ability of this virus to mutate and evade our immune system by disguising itself. This image serves to remind us of the devastating impact SARS-CoV-2 has had on multiple organs and the need to better understand how this occurs and what causes persistent symptoms among patients.”
The audience’s choice prize was won by Cheryl Tan of the Lewandowski and Leeson Group, with her thought-provoking composite image "The growing heart: From mother to offspring" (see below).
Cheryl explained that the image reflected the complex in-utero cardiac development process of the unborn child. Several maternal factors during gestation can affect cardiac development, including genetics, epigenetics, intra-uterine environment and pregnancy-related hypertensive disorders. Cheryl’s image depicts some of the different imaging techniques used to investigate cardiac development and remodelling across critical development stages, such as MRI imaging of the heart, and microscopy imaging of the cardiovascular-related cells. Acknowledging the impact of her BHF-funded research, Cheryl highlighted that this deep phenotyping approach allows us to better understand disease development and potential targets for early prevention of heart disease.
With congratulations to Hasan and Cheryl, we look forward to continuing this competition at the 2022 Symposium with more exciting images of the science taking place across the CRE.