Dr. Josh Abecassis is Assistant Professor at the University of Louisville, in the Department of Neurological Surgery, Director of the Louisville Bypass and Revascularization Center (LBRC), and Director of the Cerebrovascular Division. He is passionate about delivering top-notch open microsurgical and endovascular care to the community, and improving diagnostic imaging options for patients with cerebrovascular disease. HIs lab focuses on implementing novel non invasive imaging techniques in various cerebrovascular disease states.

Please tell us your background, where you are from, schooling, etc.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and completed both his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and medical degree at Northwestern University. I completed a residency in neurological surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle, with an enfolded fellowship in skull base/open cerebrovascular neurosurgery. I then went on to the University of Miami to complete a CAST accredited fellowship in endovascular neurosurgery.

What led you to become involved with brain aneurysm research?

I am passionate about delivering the best advice I can to patients with aneurysms. Being diagnosed with an intracranial aneurysm is a life changing event, and our goal is to help navigate a patient and their family through this diagnosis, the options for care, and ultimately decide on a path. As providers, we have limited data and natural history studies to help guide our advice for which aneurysms may be “high risk” and pose a threat of rupture.

In the simplest terms, what is the purpose of your project?

Our project aims to use a special form of MRI (called “4D Flow MRI”, no contrast or radiation, so non invasive) to analyze aneurysms and determine “high risk” ones from “lower risk” ones, based on the pressures, forces, and flow inside the aneurysm and the blood vessels around it.

In the simplest terms, what do you hope will change through your research findings?

We hope that down the road, when patients are diagnosed with an intracranial aneurysm, our imaging technique will be used to help inform patients (and doctors) which aneurysms are sinister, higher risk lesions that should be treated, and which are likely benign, low risk lesions that can be observed.

Why is the funding you are receiving through the Brain Aneurysm Foundation so important?

The BAF grant is critical for our lab to perform this analysis on ~8 patients with intracranial aneurysms, so that we can refine a very complicated imaging protocol into one that is useful, efficient, and effective. This will then allow us to increase the number of patients we study with future, larger grants.