Joanna Wardlaw
Joanna Wardlaw
- mechanisms, prevention and treatment of cerebral small vessel disease, a common cause of stroke and dementia.
- MRI methods for assessing blood-brain barrier function, cerebral microvascular reactivity, structural integrity of the brain
- multimodal image analyses methods to assess and quantify brain structure and function.
- diagnosis, treatment and prevention of acute ischaemic stroke
- cost effective use of imaging in stroke diagnosis, prevention and treatment
- randomised clinical trials, translational studies, observational studies, meta-analyses
- lifecourse effects on the brain, ageing, stroke and dementia.
I work for the University of Edinburgh and the NHS Lothian. I am an expert in brain scanning. My research focuses on preventing stroke, treating stroke, diagnosing stroke, and finding out more about the causes of different types of stroke. Much of my research has used different types of brain scanning to answer these questions. I have contributed to research that led to clot-busting treatments for stroke, and better use of scanning for patients when they come to hospital after a TIA or stroke, resulting in better guidelines on how to diagnose and treat patients with stroke all over the world. Now, I am researching the causes and treatment of small strokes due to something going wrong in tiny brain blood vessels. This small vessel disease can cause small strokes, or gradual brain damage without the person noticing, that leads to loss of thinking skills and eventually dementia.