CHAIRMEN OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Professor Knuuti is the director and professor of Turku PET Centre, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital. Professor Knuuti’s main research field is noninvasive imaging especially using PET, SPECT, echocardiography, MRI and CT. The main research focus has been on cardiovascular diseases especially coronary artery disease and heart failure. He has worked actively in European Society of Cardiology working groups, councils and guideline committees and European Association of Nuclear Medicine. He has 1168 WoS publications. His H-Index is 118.
Antti Saraste works as cardiologist and professor at Turku University Hospital and University of Turku. His research aims at evaluation of pathological mechanisms and diagnostic strategies for cardiovascular diseases using non-invasive imaging modalities, including coronary computed tomography angiography, positron emission tomography (PET) and ultrasound. In translational and clinical studies, his research focuses on PET imaging of angiogenesis, inflammation and fibrosis in coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease and heart failure. He also participates in several diagnostic and therapeutic trials in coronary artery disease and heart failure. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles in international journals.
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Katriina Aalto-Setälä, Timo Hiltunen, Risto Kaaja, Juhani Knuuti, Antti Saraste and Juha Sinisalo
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Katriina Aalto-Setälä, Elli Dahl, Timo Hiltunen, Risto Kaaja, Juhani Knuuti, Tiina Lämsä, Petri Manninen, Antti Saraste and Juha Sinisalo
SPEAKERS
Jeroen Bax is Director of non-invasive imaging and Director of the echo-lab at the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. His main interests include clinical cardiology, heart valve disease, heart failure, cardiac resynchronization therapy and the application of all different imaging modalities to these clinical fields. Professor Bax has authored numerous papers and holds several positions in national and international scientific organizations, as well as serving on the editorial boards of many different journals.
Frank Michael Bengel is a German professor and nuclear medicine physician. He is the current director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine and the Dean of Research at the Hannover Medical School. Bengel published about 400 original articles and reviews in scientific journals, as well as 20 book chapters. His main research focus is the application of noninvasive imaging techniques for the assessment of functional mechanisms in the body (especially in the cardiovascular system). He advanced nuclear imaging techniques targeting blood flow, metabolism and autonomic nervous system of the heart. He also introduced novel techniques for imaging of gene expression and for tracking of stem and immune cells in the heart. Rapid translation of novel tests from research to patient care is at the center of his work, in order to facilitate early disease detection and to refine the choice of therapy.
Göran Bergström (MD, PhD) is full professor and head of the Clinical Cardiometabolic research group at the Wallenberg Laboratory, Sahlgrenska Academy, Gothenburg University and senior consultant in Clinical Physiology at the Vascular Diagnostic Unit, Sahlgrenska University Hospital. His research group strives to improve and personalize risk prediction of cardiovascular disease. Professor Bergstrom has authored more than 200 original scientific publications (SCOPUS ID 57205318515). Göran Bergström is since 2010 chair of steering group of the Swedish CArdioPulmonary bioImage Study (SCAPIS), which has recruited and extensively phenotype more than 30,000 randomly recruited participants aged 50-64 years at six Swedish university hospitals (www.scapis.org).
Morten Bottcher is proferssor of Cardiology at Aarhus University Denmark, Head of University Clinic for Cardiovascular Research Institute for Clinical Medicine Aarhus University, Head of Cardiac Imaging at Goedstrup Hospial Herning Denmark and Senior Consultant Department of Cardiology Goedstrup Hospital Denmark.
Prof. Victoria Delgado, is currently the head of the cardiovascular imaging department of the Heart Institute at the University Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol and scientific director of the Centre of Comparative Medicine and Bioimaging in Badalona, Spain. She graduated in medical school at the University of Barcelona (Spain), accomplished her training in Cardiology at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona (Spain) and followed a 3-year fellowship at the Leiden University Medical Center (The Netherlands) where she was appointed as cardiologist with expertise on multimodality imaging from 2010 till 2021. She obtained her PhD degree cum laude in 2010 at the Leiden University with the thesis entitled Novel Cardiac Imaging Technologies: Implications in Clinical Decision Making. She is currently Senior Editor of Circulation and President of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging.
Dr. Marcelo Di Carli is the Executive Director of Cardiovascular Imaging and the Steven E. Seltzer MD Professor of Radiology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has served as President of the Cardiovascular Council of the SNMMI, Chair of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine, and the Imaging Council of the ACC. His principal research interest has been the application of positron emission tomography and molecular imaging to the cardiovascular system in translational and clinical studies. He has published over 350 peer-reviewed articles, edited 3 textbooks on multimodality imaging, and book chapters including leading references like Harrison’s Internal Medicine and Braunwald’s Heart Disease. He consults for more than 20 journals and serves on editorial boards for Circulation, JACC, and others. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging and now leads the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology. He was recently recognized with the Distinguished Mentor Award by the ACC.
Thor Edvardsen is Professor in Medicine, Dept. of Cardiology at the Oslo University Hospital and the University of Oslo in Norway. Edvardsen has published more than 450 international scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals. His H-index at Web of Science, Clarivate is 86 and his average impact factor per paper is 9.2. He has supervised 32 candidates to complete their PhD degree. Edvardsen has extensive knowledge of echocardiography, CMR, CT and hemodynamics. Past President of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) from 2018 - 2020.
Gerhard Hindricks
Pál Maurovich-Horvat MD PhD MPH, professor of cardiology and radiology, head of the Medical Imaging Centre and chairman of the Department of Radiology at Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary. He is a Board Member of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography and the Editor-in-chief of IMAGING. Dr. Maurovich-Horvat graduated from the Semmelweis University in 2006, which was followed by a three-year advanced cardiovascular imaging research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Maurovich-Horvat studied clinical effectiveness at the Harvard University, School of Public Health, where he graduated in 2012 and received a Master of Public Health degree. His research interest focuses on cardiac CT imaging and on the development of personalized cardiovascular risk assessment. Dr. Maurovich-Horvat is the author of more than 300 international, peer-reviewed publications on cardiac CT, his total impact factor is over 1800 with citations over 15,000.
Prof Christoph Nienaber has a background of experimental and clinical medicine practising around 40 years in several institution in the US, Germany and since 10 years in London, UK, at the Royal Brompton Hospital, part of the biggest NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. He is a board certified interventional cardiologist with long expertise end experience in coronary intervention, TAVI and most importantly in non-surgical interventions in acute and chronic aortic conditions. Thoughout his carreer he has always followed the genuine principle of combining interventions with an appropriate accompanying imaging approach for reasons of diagnostic precision, intraprocedural guidance and quality control. This principle is reflected in many of his 700+ high ranking publications over the years resulting in a H-Index of 115. He is also a founder of the International Registry of Aortic Dissection (incepted in 1996) and served in various Guideline Committees for the ESC and EACTS. His current scientific work focusses on managing aortic conditions in hereditary connective tissue disorders, on "aortopathies in general" and on functional image processing in cooperation with Imperial College in London; his clinical focus remains on risk analysis in patients with coronary and aortic conditions, and on improving the management of those patients by non-surgical interventions (minimally invasive strategies and stenting) or risk mitigation by optimised pharmacotherapy.
Steffen Petersen is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London and a Consultant Cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre, Barts Health NHS Trust. He is the Director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre (interim). He is Immediate Past President of the European Society of Cardiology's (ESC) European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI). He holds an MBCHB and MDRES equivalent (Dr med.) from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, a DPHIL (OXON) from the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford, an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health and an MSc from the London School of Economics. He is level 3 certified for cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). He has been actively involved in cardiovascular magnetic resonance since 1998 and he reports over 1000 cardiac adult MRI scans each year. His research interests include clinical trials using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), cost-effectiveness analysis related to cardiac imaging and primary prevention, large scale population-based studies using CMR including AI approaches (UK Biobank cardiac imaging lead) and electronic health record research that incorporates cardiac imaging data.
Otto Smisteh is Professor MD, PhD and Specialist in Cardiology at Rikshospitalet, University of Oslo, Norway. He has pioneered the myocardial work method (non-invasive LV pressure strain loops), published 295 PuBMed articles, including 26 in Circulation, 21 in JACC and 17 in the European Heart Journal. His reseach interests are imaging and pathophysiology of diastolic function and LV dyssynchrony. His current focus is on novel methods to measure diastolic function non-invasively.
Suvi Tuohinen is the imaging cardiologist with special interest to cardiooncology and structural heart interventions.
Michel Zuber has involved in advanced echocardiography with stressechocardiography, 3D echocardiography and interventional echocardiography, performing more than 900 guidance of clipping interventions. He has involved in several new structural interventions as senior consultant. He is organizer of 32 courses in echocardiography in Switzerland with finally more than 500 attending cardiologists.
