Access to cardiac MRI (CMR) remains limited across many healthcare settings. Community and tertiary hospitals often face barriers to offering CMR, and even academic institutions can struggle to scale CMR use. As a result, many patients miss out on gold-standard cardiac imaging, leading to gaps in care and delayed diagnoses.
At RSNA 2024, we sat down with Dr. Sean Hughes, Director of Cardiac MRI Laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, to discuss how his team is addressing these challenges and what others can learn from their approach.
Q. What is Cardiac MRI, and Why is it So Important?
A. Cardiac MRI is a comprehensive test that offers a wealth of information, including cardiac structures, functions, and important physiology like heart valves and muscle. It is vital for clinical caregivers because the modality provides specific information about what therapy or medications can produce the greatest benefit for patients.
Q. Why is Cardiac MRI Not More Widely Available?
A. Cardiac MRI is the gold standard for imaging the heart. It’s a test done without any radiation exposure. The test typically takes 45 minutes and allows us to image the heart size, structure, and function. Its utility covers a variety of medical diagnoses, including assessment of cardiomyopathy and even stress imaging for patients with chest pains to exclude obstructive coronary disease.
Q. Why is it Not More Widely Adopted?
A. The reason cardiac MRI has failed to expand to community hospitals and even tertiary hospitals is simple: it’s really difficult to do. For a technologist to complete cardiac MRI fast, they need to have specific training with the modality. And many institutions – especially community hospitals – have no or little access to expert cardiac MRI technologists.
The test itself can take over an hour with a less experienced technologist running it, and that can be very disruptive for radiologists’ schedules. The images themselves are often low quality, too, and it can be difficult to do post-processing of the images. So, there’s an inertia there that’s difficult to overcome. It’s difficult for community hospitals – and even academic centers – to get to a place where they have the time, expertise, and the correct software to perform these exams.
Q. How Do You See Technology Like Vista AI Helping to Overcome These Challenges?
A. Vista AI automates and simplifies the cardiac MRI exam. The software takes control of the console and performs an entire comprehensive exam with the guidance of a technologist if needed. The software also identifies artifacts and repeats exam sequences when necessary. This has been proven to reduce the time necessary to perform a comprehensive exam. In fact, the software performs the exam roughly 50% faster than an unassisted exam, reducing the average from 60 minutes to around 30 minutes.
As a result, Vista AI removes most impediments to the expansion of cardiac MRI. There is no longer a requirement to have an experienced cardiac MRI technologist on-site. So, whether it’s performing more efficient exams at established institutions or starting a program at a community hospital, Vista AI makes it easier to perform quality, efficient cardiac MRI.
Q. What Are You Hoping it Will Achieve?
A. My institution is considering utilizing Vista AI for a couple of reasons. One is that we want to be more efficient. Even though we have very experienced cardiac MRI technologists, I think we can do better. Vista AI can help us improve the efficiency of the exam and the quality of our imaging.
Maybe more importantly, at Vanderbilt, we’re not currently performing cardiac MRI at any of our outreach areas because we lack the bandwidth – the time and the expertise – to do so. Vista AI will allow us to perform cardiac MRIs at many of these locations. At the moment, we have a 3- to 4-month backlog, and we hope to reduce that significantly using Vista AI.
Watch Dr. Sean Hughes’ RSNA 2024 Presentation
The message is clear: breaking the inertia around CMR adoption is vital to addressing imaging backlogs and improving cardiac care. It’s a topic Dr. Hughes is deeply passionate about–and one he explored in depth during his recent RSNA presentation.
In his talk, he covered:
- Five key factors behind CMR inertia
- Why CMR is a powerful diagnostic tool
- How Vista AI can help expand CMR access and adoption
Want to hear more from a leader in cardiac MRI?
