Population-based models of uterine and placental blood flow

Advances in imagine technologies are allowing us to see the anatomic structures in the uterus and placenta with increasing detail. However, there are still significant gaps in our knowledge regarding how these anatomic structures relate to the efficiency of nutrient delivery to the developing fetus. Our group has taken important steps toward developing computational approaches to relating these complex structures to blood flow dynamics, and thus nutrient delivery. This project will contribute to this effort by developing new computational models of uterine and placental structure that can be customised to represent normal changes in the utero-placental vasculature through pregnancy and also changes to these structures in disease. The student will work toward predictive computational tools that can take as an input patient specific structural and functional information, and provide as an output an estimate of uteroplacental efficiency.