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Rik Vos
Principal Investigator

Dr. ir. H.J. (Rik) Vos, PhD

Associate Professor

  • Department
  • Cardiology

About

Introduction

Dr. Rik Vos currently is an associate professor at the Biomedical Engineering group of the Cardiology department at Erasmus MC Rotterdam, and at the Medical Imaging group of ImPhys, Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology. These groups works at the cross roads of physics, imaging, and clinical translation for improving diagnosis, therapy, and monitoring. 

How stiff is the heart muscle actually? What is the relation between heart motion, blood perfusion, and blood flow inside the left ventricle? These are the questions he is working on. The approach is to combine in-depth knowledge of various recent high frame rate ultrasound machines [Ultrasonics, Verasonics, Zonare], data processing, physics of ultrasound propagation, a heart failure model and patient studies. The methods provide a huge amount of functional information, otherwise unseen with conventional echocardiography. The strong link to clinicians and sonographers safeguards the direction towards clinical needs and insights. 

Field(s) of expertise

Biomedical engineering, high framerate echocardiography, ultrasound contrast agents, transducer development

Education and career

Dr. Rik Vos holds an MSc in Applied Physics (2004, with honours, Delft University of Technology) and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (2010, Erasmus MC). He has studied at the University of Florence, Italy, for one year and broadened his view while working at the Dutch research institute TNO developing cutting-edge acoustic array sensor technology. Currently he is an associate professor at the Biomedical Engineering group of the Cardiology department at Erasmus MC Rotterdam, and at the Medical Imaging group of ImPhys, Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology.

List of clinical and volunteer studies:

  • Bone perfusion imaging – with Sorbonne University, Paris (2020)
  • Neonatal ultrasonic brain monitoring and vascular imaging – with Neonatology dept. (2019)
  • Variability and acoustic windows of cardiac shear wave imaging in volunteers (2018 / 2019)
  • Shear wave elastography in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – with Cardiology dept. (2018)
  • Contrast flow imaging in a range of heart failure patients – with Cardiology dept. (2018)
  • Contrast flow imaging in abdominal aorta of volunteers – with UTwente/LUMC/TU Delft (2017)
  • High frame rate Doppler imaging of finger joints – with Rheumatology dept. (2016)

Publications

Teaching activities

Click here for supervised theses

Rik organizes the Rotterdam Summer School of ultrasound contrast agents, and is guest teacher for several Clinical Technology courses, in collaboration with Delft University of Technology.

 

Other positions

Rik Vos has been founder, board member and chairman of Young@Heart, the Dutch community of young cardiovascular researchers in the Netherlands.

He also was board member of the Erasmus MC Postdoc Network, and 1-yr fulltime board member of the Student Association of Applied Physics at Delft University of Technology.

He also is a co-director of the annual European Symposium of Ultrasound Contrast Imaging and Therapy, that has about 200 participants from all around the world. 

Scholarships, grants, and awards

Rik Vos has won a prestigious Dutch personal NWO-TTW VIDI grant in 2018, thus receiving a total of 1 M€ to develop a new method for accurate blood perfusion imaging of the heart in 3D. He further is co-author and co-PI on several Dutch NWO-TTW grants and one European grant, adding up to an additional 1.9 M€.

My Groups