Prof. dr. Birgitta Velthuis (1964) completed her medical and radiology training in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She obtained her PhD degree: “CT angiography in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage” in 1998 in Utrecht. Since 1999 she works as a radiologist in the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) and is specialized in cardiovascular and neurovascular non-invasive CT and MRI imaging. She is Professor in Radiology of the Heart-Brain axis at the University of Utrecht, and serves on the board of the Netherlands Vascular Forum (NVF) and the cluster Cardiovascular Risk Management (CVRM). Her work is divided between patient care, teaching and research. 
Her neurovascular research concentrates on CT and MRI imaging in patients with ischemic stroke, subarachnoid haemorrhage and intracranial aneurysms. Her cardiovascular research focuses on imaging of atherosclerosis, hereditary and acquired cardiomyopathies, heart failure, gender and sports cardiology. Artificial intelligence and high field strength MRI have also become important parts of her research work
The heart-brain axis work focuses on imaging cardioembolic sources of acute ischemic stroke and imaging atherosclerosis with assessment of plaque composition and inflammation at different locations in the body.