Cardiac Imaging

If your doctor suspects you have heart disease or wants to see if your condition has gotten better or worse, you'll probably need cardiac imaging.

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For all requests:

1-319-356-7102

For all other requests:: 1-800-777-8442

Cardiac imaging includes various noninvasive procedures, such as echocardiogram, stress test, cardiac CT scan, and cardiac MRI. These tests take still or moving pictures of your heart. We may use them to:

Assess whether you’ll benefit from an interventional procedure such as an angioplasty
Check whether a recent treatment worked
Evaluate cardiac infiltrative diseases (conditions that cause abnormal proteins or other substances to build up inside the heart)

Evaluate how well your heart pumps blood
Find blood clots or plaque build-up inside a blood vessel
Identify problems with your heart’s structure, such as leaky valves or holes between the chambers

Look for tumors or clots in the heart
Pinpoint which areas of the heart muscle were damaged after a heart attack
See how well blood flows through the heart muscle or surrounding blood vessels

The University of Iowa Heart and Vascular Center is home to the largest and most experienced cardiac imaging teams in the state. We also use the most advanced equipment and technology available. This means we can catch cardiovascular problems early, when they’re usually easier to treat.

Iowa's leading cardiac imaging specialists

You can have confidence in our cardiac imaging team because:

We have the right tools for the job

If your doctor wants you to have a specific test, you’ll find it here. Our services range from traditional and transesophageal echocardiograms to cardiac CT scans and cardiac MRIs. We also offer nuclear heart scans, which use special cameras and a safe, radioactive material (tracer) to show blood flow into the heart muscle. These tests include cardiac PET and multigated acquisition (MUGA) scans.

We offer a higher level of testing

We’re often the provider of choice when patients need highly specialized imaging procedures that aren’t widely available. For example, we’re the only center in Iowa that offers cardiac MRI stress tests.

Why cardiac imaging expertise makes a difference

No matter how quickly cardiac imaging technologies evolve, our team stays up to date with the latest equipment and techniques. This is important because each cardiac imaging test offers unique advantages. Also, some procedures are better at detecting certain conditions than others.

The UI Heart and Vascular Center’s cardiac imaging specialists are skilled at weighing the benefits and risks of each test for each patient. Even though today’s procedures are safer than ever, there are still important factors to consider. These include:

Determining whether a test that exposes you to small amounts of radiation will work better than a test that does not use radiation
Knowing which test can pick up problems that may be blocked by bone, so you don’t have to undergo repeat tests
Understanding which test will capture the clearest pictures, despite your heart’s nonstop motion

We’ll work with your regular provider to determine which test is right for you, based on your symptoms, previous testing, and other factors.

What to expect

Determining whether a test that exposes you to small amounts of radiation will work better than a test that does not use radiation
Knowing which test can pick up problems that may be blocked by bone, so you don’t have to undergo repeat tests
Understanding which test will capture the clearest pictures, despite your heart’s nonstop motion

We’ll work with your regular provider to determine which test is right for you, based on your symptoms, previous testing, and other factors.