Heart Imaging

The Heart Imaging Program at the Mount Sinai Health System is nationally renowned for its academic excellence and clinical achievements. We perform a full spectrum of echocardiographic services with a strong emphasis on echocardiographic research and cutting edge technology. The program is run by the leaders in the field of echocardiography and employs a highly trained technical staff including registered sonographers, nurses, and level-3 echo fellows.

We store all echocardiographic studies digitally and can review them at any of our workstations. We perform 23,000 echocardiographic studies annually, including more than 2,400 stress echocardiographic studies and approximately 1,600 transesophageal studies. We also perform sophisticated quantitative images such as strain and strain rate, echo imaging for structural heart disease including transcatheter aortic valve replacement, mitral clip and transcatheter mitral valve replacement, septal ablation, and left atrial appendage closure.

Tools for Detecting Heart Disease

Throughout the Sinai System, our cardiologists use a variety of diagnostic technologies including:

• Nuclear and Molecular Imaging

• Myocardial Perfusion Imaging

• Cardiac Computed Tomography

• Cardiac PET CT Study

• Coronary CT Angiography

• Cardiac MRI

Our Laboratory

The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory opened in 1991 and currently performs close to 5,000 tests a year. We use CZT SPECT cameras and our lab is accredited by the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Nuclear Medicine Laboratories. All attendings in nuclear cardiology are Board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases, and nuclear cardiology. Our technical personnel include experienced registered nurses and certified nuclear technologists. All laboratory employees are certified in basic life support or advanced life support.

We perform both exercise and pharmacological stress (e.g., regadenoson, dipyridamole, adenosine, or dobutamine) cardiovascular stressing. We use perfusion tracers (Tc99m sestamibi, and Tl-201) according to the appropriate indication for individual patients.

The laboratory also performs cardiopulmonary stress testing with measurement of oxygen consumption and cardiac output during exercise using inert gas rebreathing method. This testing is most appropriate for patients with advanced congestive heart failure.