The 2025 American Heart Association annual conference wraps up today, and cardiac imaging has been a major focus in New Orleans. In particular, research has highlighted imaging’s power to predict future cardiac events – and guide treatment to prevent them.
Coronary artery calcium scoring with CT is a great example, as CAC scores can predict not only cardiovascular but also all-cause mortality.
- Another common theme at AHA 2025 has been opportunistic screening, in which data from imaging exams acquired for other clinical indications can be used to detect osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and other issues.
Check out the items below for some of the hottest imaging topics at AHA 2025, and for a deeper dive into non-imaging news from New Orleans, be sure to visit our Cardiac Wire sister site.
News from the show’s first three days include…
- A massive study of 40k people found that those with CT-derived CAC scores greater than 0 were 2X-3X more likely to die from any cause than people without any CAC – and more died of causes other than cardiovascular disease. Also, 8.5% of patients had other significant findings.
- Community health personnel on a Native American reservation were trained to perform point-of-care screening echocardiography assisted by Us2.ai’s AI algorithms.
- Us2.ai’s algorithm was also used with transthoracic echo in the SCAN-MP study to detect transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, a cause of heart failure.
- Treadmill stress tests fell short compared to CCTA in screening older master’s athletes for ischemia that could lead to sudden cardiac death.
- A program in Brazil that used echocardiography to screen schoolchildren for latent rheumatic heart disease led to lower prevalence rates after 10 years (2.5% vs. 4.5%).
- Patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy who had higher levels of myocardial fibrosis on cardiac MRI were almost 6X more likely to have adverse events over eight years.
- HeartLung Technologies’ AI tool predicted CAC presence on CT scans in 2.1k participants in the MESA study with higher AUC than other tools (AUC = 0.73 vs. 0.68).
- Another study used HeartLung’s AI to analyze CAC scans to detect myosteatosis – a sign of systemic metabolic dysfunction – which predicted atrial fibrillation and heart failure.
- A program promoting CAC scoring to an urban population brought in people for screening who might have been missed through physician referral.
The Takeaway
This week’s news from AHA 2025 shows medical imaging’s contribution to early detection of cardiovascular disease – the leading cause of death worldwide. CT-based CAC scoring has especially promising potential, not only for heart disease but also other conditions through opportunistic screening.