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Cardiothoracic Imaging

Leadership

Baskaran Sundaram, MD
  • Director, Cardiothoracic Imaging Division
  • Herman I. Libshitz, MD Professor in Thoracic Radiology
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Research

The cardiothoracic section is a leader in cardiac CT research and has published many scholarly articles on the topic. Dr Halpern is the author of a leading textbook on cardiac CT. Cardiac CT is a rapidly growing noninvasive way of evaluating the coronary arteries and for assessing anatomic variants and anomalies, intracardiac masses, and abnormalities of the great vessels. It also can assess function, such as ejection fraction and contractility.

Ongoing Cardiac Research Projects

Cost-Effectiveness of cCTA in the ED – a cost and time analysis is being performed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of using the “triple rule-out” cCTA study on patients presenting to the emergency department with chest pain.

Outcomes Analysis of cCTA in the ED – Clinical outcomes analysis is being performed to evaluate the diagnostic yield of “triple rule-out” cCTA studies on patients presenting to the emergency department with chest pain.

Aortic value evaluation – cCTA and MRI may be used for evaluation of cardiac valves prior to aortic valve surgery and aortic aneurysm repair.

Evaluation of calcified coronary plaque – different image processing techniques are used to optimize evaluation of calcified coronary arteries.

Dual Energy Evaluation of Coronary Stents – we are evaluating the latest technology to improve imaging of coronary stents with cCTA.

Breast Dose Reduction – new techniques are under evaluation to reduce the effective dose to breast tissue during cCTA.

Identification of Vulnerable Coronary Artery Plaques – in a group of almost 200 patients who have undergone both cCTA and cardiac cath at Jefferson, an effort will be made to determine whether cCTA can identify plaques that appear ulcerated or eroded at cath.

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