Bridging the Translational Divide
The Cardiovascular Imaging Laboratory (CVIL) and its collaborators are developing and implementing a diverse portfolio of imaging tools designed to facilitate the bi-directional flow between the cell and man of biologic information relevant to cardiovascular and pulmonary disease. The CVIL incorporates the individual strengths of various imaging technologies such as PET/CT, MRI, MRS echocardiography, and SPECT to provide an understanding of disease from both a vertical and horizontal perspective. An example of the former is the development of molecular imaging tools that detect specific cellular processes causative of perturbations in structure–function relationships in heart and lung. An example of the latter is the performance of these techniques to study disease in humans and relevant pre-clinical models.