Director: Baskaran Sundaram, MD
Tuition: $1,000/day, $4,800 for the 1st week, $3,600 for each additional week up to one month, $2,000 per week thereafter.
Every year, our department serves over half-a-million patients and enjoys high-level satisfaction grades from our patients and clinicians. Our department’s patient interactions include approximately 9000 non-invasive CT/MRI angiography exams and 1500 cardiac CT/MR exams, performed for a range of clinical indications. Our scanning machines are regularly upgraded and maintained with tight quality control measures to ensure safety and quality. Our quality control includes radiation dose reduction and prevention for contrast-induced nephropathy, gadolinium-induced nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, and contrast reactions.
Our cardiothoracic radiologists are fellowship-trained and highly experienced faculty members. They provide comprehensive imaging interpretations with a strong passion for cardiothoracic imaging. Cumulatively, they have more than 50 years of cardiothoracic imaging experience that includes years of CT, MRI, nuclear medicine, echocardiography, and conventional angiography. They are nationally recognized experts with leadership roles in radiology societies. They have produced numerous cardiac and thoracic imaging-related scholarly products, including external presentations, book chapters, books, and peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications.
Our thoracic CT examinations indications include imaging for thoracic malignancies, indeterminate lung nodules, lung cancer screening, and interstitial lung disease. Our cardiovascular examinations include cardiac CT for coronary calcium scoring, coronary CT angiography, CTA for Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) planning, CTA for robotic minimally invasive cardiac surgery, and pulmonary vein mapping. Our MRI examination indications are for the assessment for mediastinal masses, and cardiovascular MRI for ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, valvular heart diseases, congenital heart diseases, and cardiac masses.
Our visiting fellows have the opportunity to review and update all aspects of cardiothoracic imaging, including the exam indications, scan parameters, optimizing scan techniques, 3D post-processing, and standardized reporting. We use high-speed CT scanners that have the ability for single heartbeat imaging, and 1.5 and 3 Tesla MRI machines. We also use modern imaging techniques for cardiothoracic imaging with digital radiography, dual-energy CT scanning, and 3T MRI. We continue to perform research and integrate recent advancements in cardiothoracic imaging, including the use of artificial/augmented intelligence.
We accommodate combining cardiothoracic visiting fellowship with other radiology specialties to suit the need of the visiting fellows. We look forward to having you as our visiting fellow in our department.
This fellowship is designed to meet the following practice gap: advanced cardiothoracic imaging techniques are not widely used in clinical practice. Practitioners often do not know indicators and techniques for those studies.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the updates in multimodality imaging, management guidelines and practice patterns in thoracic malignancies, indeterminate lung nodules, lung cancer screening, and interstitial lung disease.
- Apply modern non-invasive cardiothoracic imaging with regards to the scan parameters, scan techniques, 3D post-processing, and standardized reporting and report templates of coronary calcium scoring, coronary CT angiography, CTA for Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) planning, CTA for robotic minimally invasive cardiac surgery, dual-energy scanning and pulmonary vein mapping.
- Apply cardiac MRI with regards to the scan parameters, scan techniques, 3D post-processing, and standardized reporting and report templates of Our MRI examination for the assessment for mediastinal masses, and cardiovascular MRI for ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, valvular heart diseases, congenital heart diseases, and cardiac masses.
