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Northwestern University researchers have developed the first physics-based metric to predict whether or not a person might someday suffer an aortic aneurysm, a deadly condition that often causes no symptoms until it ruptures.

In the new study, the researchers forecasted abnormal aortic growth by measuring subtle “fluttering” in a patient’s blood vessel. As blood flows through the , it can cause the vessel wall to flutter, similar to how a banner ripples in the breeze. While stable flow predicts normal, natural growth, unstable flutter is highly predictive of future abnormal growth and potential rupture, the researchers found.

Called the “flutter instability parameter” (FIP), the new metric predicted future aneurysm with 98% accuracy on average three years after the FIP was first measured. To calculate a personalized FIP, patients only need a single 4D flow magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.

As a result, he’s built a network of peers who can relate to his challenges, name-dropping Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who had appeared on the same podcast just a few weeks before, as one of them.

“Daniel Ek doesn’t know the Brian before Airbnb,” Chesky explained. “So maybe he doesn’t know ‘the real me’…but he does know a different ‘real me’ that my childhood friends can’t know, because high school and college friends can’t possibly know what it’s like for me to go through what I’m going through.

I can tell it to them, and they can have compassion, but they can’t possibly know what I’m talking about. But Daniel can.