Medicine, Radiology Redefine Cardiac Imaging

BWH is changing the image of Radiology.

With the appointment of Marcelo Di Carli, MD, as the hospital’s first director of Cardiovascular Non-invasive Imaging, BWH is putting patients at the center of care and integrating Radiology services with the Department of Medicine’s Cardiovascular Division and the Department of Surgery’s Vascular and Cardiac Surgery divisions.

“We’re constructing a fully-integrated service for imaging built around appropriate care,” said Di Carli, also BWH’s chief of Nuclear Medicine.

Peter Libby, MD, chief of Cardiovascular Medicine, called BWH’s new structure for non-invasive cardiovascular imaging unprecedented. “BWH is breaking the mold and taking down traditional barriers,” he said. “Interlinking Radiology and Cardiology puts the patient first and the imaging modality second.”

Libby praised hospital leadership and department leaders in Medicine and Radiology for taking the bold steps to make this ground-breaking care model a reality. “The leadership of BWH, Medicine and Radiology are challenging the traditional structures of academic medicine and constructing something new from the ground up,” he said.

Cardiovascular Non-invasive Imaging includes Cardiac CT, Cardiac MRI, Vascular CT, Vascular MRI, Nuclear Cardiac PET, Echocardiography, Vascular Ultrasound and Cardiac Non-Imaging Stress/Cardio Pulmonary Testing. All these services will be available to patients in the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, an unprecedented array of services under one roof.

“This significantly differentiates Brigham and Women’s Hospital from other academic medical centers,” Di Carli said. “This integrated cardiovascular imaging program offers an unprecedented opportunity to build upon the strengths of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in basic science and molecular medicine, the advanced imaging infrastructure and rich tradition in imaging science, and our large clinical trials network to facilitate the validation of advances in imaging and translation into clinical applications to improve patient care.”

Through this new structure, BWH radiologists and cardiologists will construct critical pathways for patients with multiple imaging modalities from echocardiograms to nuclear medicine. “We need to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each modality without overstating either of them,” he said.

BWH faculty also will lead advances in research and training in cardiovascular imaging. The new structure and patient volume will pave the way for researchers to analyze patient outcomes related to cost of care and effectiveness of certain modalities in certain circumstances through a comprehensive integrated approach rather than separate parallel tracks.

In addition, BWH will be in a position to advance the training of “the next generation of imaging specialists,” according to Di Carli. Radiologists would specialize in cardiac or vascular disease, or both, with training across imaging modalities.

Steven Seltzer, MD, chair of Radiology, said BWH is poised to make this new structure work because the hospital is committed to investing in the latest technologies while having leading clinicians and scientists. “We boast a fleet of the latest imaging technologies arming the world’s leading physicians and scientists for patient care, research and education,” he said.