The clinical impact of longitudinal measures of cardiac and pulmonary vascular morphology in smokers

Our goal is to refine and validate an atlas based model of the epicardial surface of the heart to be used in non-contrast enhanced, non-cardiac gated CT scans. This will be done in several steps including comprehensive efforts to optimize the cardiac modeling in the CARDIA CT scans. Dr. Kalhan will assist Drs. Washko and San José Estépar with interfacing with the CARDIA study and data (he is an active member of the CARDIA steering committee and PI of the CARDIA Lung study). Dr. Kalhan will lend his specific expertise in heart and lung interactions to apply cardiac surface findings to more general heart-lung phenotypes in an effort to continue to understand how cardiac and respiratory changes evolve in both health (through analyses of CARDIA data) and disease (through work done in COPD gene).