Contact
Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry - Medicine Dept
- bbuck@ualberta.ca
- Address
-
7-112 Clinical Sciences Building
11304 83 Ave NWEdmonton ABT6G 2G3
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
atrial fibrillation stroke diagnostics machine learning neuroimaging secondary prevention
About
Personal Statement:
One of my goals is to ensure swift, consistent and effective treatment is available to anyone who suffers a stroke, no matter where they live in Alberta. In addition to effective treatment, I want to see stroke survivors get the rehabilitation and support they need in order to live their lives to the fullest.
Stroke neurologist Dr. Brian Buck is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s medical school. He completed his neurology residency at the University of British Columbia and stroke fellowship training at UCLA Medical Center and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (UofT) in Toronto. He was recruited to the University of Alberta in 2007.
Leadership and Collaborations:
Dr. Buck started his career in Edmonton at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital where he helped (along with Dr. M. Siddiqui) establish a comprehensive stroke program that includes an inpatient stroke unit, programs for stroke prevention and clinical trials, neurology consultation, and neurology resident education. He has since shifted his primary clinical practice to the University of Alberta Hospital where he works on both the acute stroke and ward services, and at the AH Owens Stroke Prevention Clinic.
Dr. Buck is involved in improving the quality of stroke care through a number of provincial and national leadership positions. He serves on the executive boards of the Canadian Stroke Consortium and Canadian Neurological Society. Dr. Buck is also currently co-chair of the Cardiovascular Health and Stroke Strategic Clinical Network (SCN) TIA and Stroke Expert working group, which aims to improve the prevention, treatment and management of vascular disease for stroke patients and their caregivers. As part of his work with the SCN, he helped lead a project to develop an integrated vascular risk reduction program at three pilot sites in Alberta and is a member of the Cardiovascular and Stroke Strategic Clinical Network’s Arrhythmia Expert Working Group.
Currently, he is a co-principal investigator on a newly funded Canadian Institutes of Health Research clinical trial called ACT-QuICR that will test in Alberta whether tenecteplase may is better able to dissolve clots blocking brain arteries while also being safer than alteplase when used in patients with acute stroke. He is co-investigator on a research project called SECRET (Study of Early Rivaroxaban for cerebral venous thrombosis), which was funded in 2017 and also the recently CIHR funded study INTERRAcT: Thrombus characteristics for predicting Reperfusion with Alteplase compared to Tenecteplase.
Clinical Interests
Dr. Buck is a consultant neurologist at the University of Alberta Hospital and Grey Nuns Community Hospital and in Edmonton. His clinical work involves covering the acute stroke and telestroke service, stroke ward, and stroke prevention clinic.
Research
Dr. Buck is a principal investigator, co-investigator or member of research collaborations funded by grants from various regional, national and international funding agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, University of Alberta Hospital Foundation and Alberta Innovates. While his research focuses primarily on stroke prevention and stroke care delivery improvement, and he has a particular interest in stroke imaging and developing new methods of stroke detection.
Dr. Buck is an active clinical trialist with several studies around stroke screening and stroke therapies funded by pharmaceuticals and medical device companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Asubio Pharmaceuticals, and Brainsgate as well as granting agencies such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Stroke Consortium and the Canadian Stroke Network.
He has authored and co-authored many publications resulting from his research that have appeared in peer-reviewed publications such as the JAMA, International Journal of Stroke, AHA Stroke, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
1) Stroke and atrial fibrillation
Dr Buck the principal investigator for the Post-Embolic Rhythm Detection With Implantable Versus External Monitoring (PER DIEM) randomized trial. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02428140
PER DIEM is a randomized, controlled trial comparing ELR (external loop recorder) to ILR (implanted loop recorder) ECG monitoring in non-cryptogenic stroke. PER DIEM will randomize (1:1) 300 TIA/stroke patients in Edmonton and Calgary without known AF to 30 days monitoring with an ELR (Sorin SpiderFlash) or 12 months with an ILR (Medtronic LINQ with CareLink). Unlike recently completed cardiac monitoring trials, in PER DIEM the majority of patients included will have at least one determined TIA/stroke etiology. The primary endpoint is clinically actionable AF lasting 2 minutes or longer. The final results of the study were recently published (see PER DIEM RCT).
2) Development of methods to improve the early (prehospital) diagnosis of stroke
Current projects include a collaboration with Prof. Russ Greiner, Pierre Boulanger and Kyle Mathewson to explore novel methods to detect stroke in the prehospital setting. Methods include using a novel EEG device embedded in a portable headframe that will be fitted on stroke patients in the ambulance and mobile stroke unit.
More information and results can be found at:
Portable headband with EEG technology may help diagnosis of stroke patients | Folio (ualberta.ca)
3) Developing novel imaging strategies to improve the selection of patients for reperfusion therapy and measuring reperfusion post EVT. For example see: Improvement of automatic ischemic stroke lesion segmentation in CT perfusion maps using a learned deep neural network - ScienceDirect
Teaching
Dr. Buck gives clinical instruction to neurology residents and supervises research trainees at all levels of education. He is passionate about teaching and helping trainees become equipped to diagnose and treat TIA and stroke.
Featured Publications
Sara Massicotte, Shabnam Vatanpour, Cody Doolan, Jianhai Zhang, Aravind Ganesh, Philip M.C. Choi, Brian H. Buck, Thalia S. Field, Amy Y.X. Yu, Timothy J. Kleinig, Keith W. Muir, Bruce C.V. Campbell, Carlos A. Molina, Ramana Appireddy, Michael D. Hill, Nishita Singh, Shelagh B. Coutts
Stroke. 2026 April; 10.1161/STROKEAHA.125.054491
Shahab Marzoughi, Ibrahim Alhabli, Nishita Singh, Fouzi Bala, William Betzner, Kaden Lam, Brian Buck, Luciana Catanese, Aleksander Tkach, Dar Dowlatshahi, Federico Carpani, Thalia S. Field, Gary Hunter, Houman Khosravani, Aleksandra Pikula, Michel Shamy, Mahesh Kate, Tolulope T. Sajobi, Mohammed Almekhlafi, Richard H. Swartz, Bijoy Menon, Aravind Ganesh
Stroke. 2026 April; 10.1161/STROKEAHA.125.054654
Katrina Hannah D. Ignacio, Fouzi Bala, Luciana Catanese, Aleksander Tkach, Mahesh Kate, Brian Buck, Ayoola Ademola, Tolulope T. Sajobi, Thalia S. Field, Aleksandra Pikula, Michel Shamy, Gary Hunter, Richard H. Swartz, MacKenzie Horn, Dariush Dowlatshahi, Jai Jai Shankar, Michael D. Hill, Bijoy K. Menon, Mohammed A. Almekhlafi, Nishita Singh
Stroke: Vascular and Interventional Neurology. 2026 March; 10.1161/SVIN.125.001974
Ronda Lun, Cody Doolan, Katrina Hannah Dizon Ignacio, Mohammed A. Almekhlafi, Brian H. Buck, Luciana Catanese, Aleksander Tkach, Tolulope Sajobi, Richard H. Swartz, Bijoy K. Menon, Nishita Singh
Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques. 2025 December; 10.1017/cjn.2025.10481
Nitin Kumar, Geetha Charan Duba, Nabeela Khan, Chetan Kashinkunti, Ashfaq Shuaib, Brian Buck, Mahesh Pundlik Kate
Sensors. 2025 October; 10.3390/s25206377
Sajeevan Sujanthan, Gayathiri Rajkumar, Katie N. Dainty, Morgan Barense, Krista L. Lanctot, Adrian M. Owen, Nishita Singh, Brian H. Buck, Houman Khosravani, Shelagh B. Coutts, Mohammed Almekhlafi, Ramana Appireddy, Aleksander Tkach, Luciana Catanese, Dar Dowlatshahi, Jennifer Mandzia, Aleksander Pikula, Heather Williams, Thalia S. Field, Alejandro Manosalva, Muzaffar Siddiqui, Gary Hunter, MacKenzie Horn, Fouzi Bala, Michael D. Hill, Michel Shamy, Aravind Ganesh, Tolulope Sajobi, Bijoy K. Menon, Richard H. Swartz
Stroke. 2025 October; 10.1161/STROKEAHA.125.051670
Anas Alrohimi, Noman Ishaque, Amanda Nicole Wagner, Thomas Jeerakathil, Brian H. Buck, Ashfaq Shuaib, Michael D. Hill, Mohammed A. Al-Mekhlafi, Sachin Mishra
Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques. 2025 September; 10.1017/cjn.2025.10421
Pattarawut Charatpangoon, Nishita Singh, Brian H. Buck, Federico Carpani, Luciana Catanese, Shelagh B. Coutts, Thalia S. Field, Gary Hunter, Houman Khosravani, Kanjana Perera, Tolulope T. Sajobi, Michel Shamy, Jai Jai Shiva Shankar, Aleksander Tkach, Richard H. Swartz, Mohammed A. Almekhlafi, Bijoy K. Menon, M. Ethan MacDonald, Aravind Ganesh
Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques. 2025 September; 10.1017/cjn.2024.352
Gurpreet Chaggar, Arth Pahwa, Brian H. Buck, Thomas Jeerakathil, Ashfaq Shuaib, Mohammed Almekhlafi, Richard Swartz, Asif Butt, Luciana Catanese, Nishita Singh, Aleksander Tkach, Tolulope T. Sajobi, Bijoy K. Menon, Mahesh Kate
Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques. 2025 September; 10.1017/cjn.2024.354
Nitin Kumar, Geetha Charan Duba, Nabeela Khan, Chetan Kashinkunti, Ashfaq Shuaib, Brian Buck, Mahesh Pundlik Kate
2025 August; 10.20944/preprints202508.1956.v1
Mary-Lou Halabi, Jillian Stang, Bijoy K. Menon, Brian H. Buck, Christiane Job-McIntosh, Stephen B. Wilton, Shelley Valaire, Balraj Mann, Lisa Collins, Colleen Taralson, Lindsay Beaulieu, Elaine Shand, Corinna Hartley, Chelsey Dalgleish, Anthony Nickonchuk, Shannon Erfle, Oje Imoukhuede, Alejandro Manosalva, Katie Lin, Shelagh B. Coutts, Thomas Jeerakathil, Ashfaq Shuaib, Andrew M. Demchuk, Michael D. Hill
Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques. 2025 June; 10.1017/cjn.2025.10121
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