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Betty Raman

MBBS DPhil FESC FRACP

Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine

  • British Heart Foundation CRE Intermediate Transition Clinical Research Fellow
  • Emanoel Lee Junior Research Fellow, St Cross College

I am an academic cardiologist and a senior clinical research fellow with a special interest in advanced cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) and multi-organ imaging and their applications to inherited and inflammatory cardiovascular diseases. MRI provides an unparallel opportunity to interrogate tissue levels changes and assess dynamic elements of vascular and metabolic homeostasis of the heart and multiple organs. I have been applying MRI in my research to advance organ-level and tissue-level insights into disease mechanisms, symptoms, and adverse clinical outcomes linked to common inherited and inflammatory syndromes. 

I moved from Australia to Oxford in 2015, having completed my specialist clinical training in Cardiology (Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians) to undertake a DPhil in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), an inherited cardiac disease which is the number one cause of sudden death in young adults and athletes. During my DPhil, we discovered a novel oxygen-sensitive magnetic resonance approach, which showed tremendous potential in predicting risk in HCM patients and has the ability to detect myocardial deoxygenation/hypoxia in other diseases non-invasively (and without contrast). This work and other research of mine were recognised for their novelty and awarded a number of prestigious national and international prizes (ESC, AHA, BSCMR young investigator/early career awards, finalists at BCS and SCMR). For my post-doc, I was awarded a British Heart Foundation CRE Transition Intermediate Clinical Research Fellowship in 2020 to carry on my research at RDM. At the peak of the pandemic, I led efforts to better understand the medium to long term effects of COVID-19 on the health of patients using MRI, CPET and other validated measures of mental, physical and cognitive health (C-MORE study). In particular, I became interested in the long-lasting effects of COVID-19 and associated host immune response on cardiovascular, multiorgan health and skeletal muscle metabolism. I'm currently leading the C-MORE study (a multiorgan MRI follow up study in COVID-19 patients) and a co-investigator in two other nationally prioritised COVID-19 follow up studies. I'm also undertaking a clinical trial for patients with Long COVID. In parallel to these efforts, I continue to research Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy to improve sudden cardiac death risk stratification and identify early sensitive markers of disease activity for early- and late-stage clinical trials. 

Recent publications

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