There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding.

In 2013, stroke was the second most frequent cause of death after coronary artery disease, accounting for 6.4 million deaths (12% of the total). About 3.3 million deaths resulted from ischemic stroke while 3.2 million deaths resulted from hemorrhagic stroke. About half of people who have had a stroke live less than one year.

The Kata Project, part of the Brain, Learning, Animation, and Movement (BLAM) Lab, will bring together domains of expertise rarely seen in the same physical space: young, imaginative, and elite engineers who are usually lost to a parallel universe outside of academia and neuroscientists and clinicians within the academy.

The study looked at people with asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis, a narrowing of the major blood vessels supplying blood to the head due to atherosclerosis, or plaque buildup.