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PET for Cardiac Amyloidosis, CCTA for Chest Pain, and MRI on Mushrooms
August 31, 2026
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Together with
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“I melded with the MRI machine, floor, walls, air. It was like nothing existed except for me, or me as part of something bigger.”
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Research subject in a study on psychedelic mushrooms and MRI.
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The ESC 2026 conference convened in Munich, Germany this weekend, and new research showing how cardiac imaging can improve patient care was high on the agenda. From the REVEAL trial on a new cardiac PET tracer to the TARGET-CTCA study of coronary CT angiography, we’ve got you covered with the latest news from the home of Oktoberfest. Just check out the headlines below. – Brian Casey, Managing Editor
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New results were presented this weekend on a PET radiopharmaceutical being developed by Bayer for imaging cardiac amyloidosis. The tracer turned in promising results in a paper presented at ESC 2026 and published simultaneously in JAMA.
Cardiac amyloidosis occurs when abnormal proteins called amyloid fibrils build up in heart tissue, eventually leading to heart failure and death. It was once thought to be untreatable, but new pharmaceutical therapies have become available that slow disease progression and improve patient outcomes.
- But first you have to make a diagnosis, and that’s been the hard part. Multiple imaging modalities are often required, and patients with cardiac amyloidosis often experience diagnostic delays of one to two years or more.
Enter Bayer, which earlier this year acquired a pair of radiopharmaceuticals from Attralus, one for PET imaging and the other for SPECT. The PET agent is iodine-124 evuzamitide, a radiolabeled synthetic peptide that binds to the amyloid fibrils that characterize cardiac amyloidosis.
- The acquisition was a bit of a departure for Bayer, which until the purchase had focused its imaging business mostly on contrast agents for X-ray, CT, and MRI.
But the results presented over the weekend from the Phase III REVEAL trial indicate Bayer may have placed a good bet.
- Researchers enrolled 170 patients from 18 U.S. centers who got PET/CT scans with iodine-124 evuzamitide. Three physicians with experience in cardiac PET/CT reviewed the results.
The REVEAL investigators discovered…
- Iodine-124 evuzamitide had 94% sensitivity for cardiac amyloidosis, with 86% specificity.
- Positive predictive value was 85%, and negative predictive value was 94%.
- The radiotracer showed high diagnostic accuracy for both types of cardiac amyloidosis, light chain (AL) and transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis.
- The radiotracer was well tolerated by patients.
The findings indicate that iodine-124 evuzamitide has potential “as a reliable first-line test to exclude cardiac amyloidosis,” meaning it could rule out the need for invasive biopsy.
- What next for the tracer? Bayer said it would be discussing the REVEAL data as well as regulatory submissions with the FDA and other health authorities.
The Takeaway
New results from REVEAL indicate that Bayer’s iodine-124 evuzamitide PET radiotracer has the potential to fundamentally change the diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis, historically one of the more challenging heart conditions to detect and manage.
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Five Years Into the Cloud – And Just Getting Started
John Muir Health in California needed help dealing with its data deluge, which became acute with the adoption of 3D breast tomosynthesis. Find out how they turned to Sectra and their cloud-based enterprise imaging management for a solution.
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Radiology Automation Simplified
CARPL is an enterprise-grade radiology AI validation and deployment platform with 250+ AI applications across 85+ AI vendors that empowers healthcare providers to access, assess, and securely integrate imaging AI in their practice. Book a demo today.
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End-to-End Prostate Workflow Management
Find out how Quibim’s QP-Prostate solution provides a comprehensive, end-to-end management workflow for prostate cancer care, supporting clinicians from the earliest stages of image acquisition through diagnosis, patient management, and follow-up.
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- CCTA Falls Short for Long-Term Risk Prediction: Coronary CT angiography fell short in determining which patients with chest pain but no heart attack might be at risk for future cardiac events. In research from the TARGET-CTCA trial presented at ESC 2026 and published simultaneously in NEJM, 3.2k at-risk patients were studied, with half getting CCTA. At the end of three years, there was no statistically significant difference in myocardial infarction or cardiovascular death between those who got CCTA and those who received usual care (7.1% vs. 7.3%, p = 0.71).
- Mammo AI Predicts Heart Disease Risk: Heart disease – not breast cancer – is the number one killer of women. But new research presented at ESC 2026 offers the exciting prospect of two-for-one screening with an AI algorithm that can predict cardiovascular disease from mammograms. In a study with 29.9k women followed for seven years, AI had respectable AUCs for predicting hypertension (0.79), ischemic heart disease (0.78), and cerebrovascular accident (0.86). In screening mammography, the algorithm could identify at-risk women who need further cardiovascular workup.
- FFR-CT Reduces Invasive Angiography: In another study from ESC 2026, Dutch researchers presented data from the FUSION trial in which Heartflow’s FFRCT Analysis AI solution reduced unnecessary invasive cath lab procedures by 44%. In 528 patients with chest pain from 12 hospitals, FFR-CT was added to standard coronary CT angiography scans to quantify coronary artery blood flow, reducing the percentage of patients referred for invasive coronary angiography (22% vs. 39%) while maintaining overall revascularization rates (20% for both).
- GE Adds to Cardiac Ultrasound Line: GE HealthCare used ESC 2026 as a stage to unveil the next generation of its Vivid line of cardiovascular ultrasound scanners. The new scanners include Vivid Explorer, targeted at high-volume echo labs and routine interventional procedures; Vivid Advanced, for midsized hospitals and cardiology practices; and Vivid Focus, for everyday cardiac imaging. The new systems broaden GE’s echocardiography line beyond the ultra-premium Vivid Pioneer.
- Echo AI Helps Novice Users: In a new paper in JAMA Cardiology, Mayo Clinic researchers showed how UltraSight’s echocardiography AI algorithm helped novice users detect aortic valve stenosis on handheld focused cardiac ultrasound screening exams with a Philips Lumify scanner. Across 1.9k patients, echo AI helped novice users perform almost as well as experienced sonographers for sensitivity (93% vs. 95%) and specificity (96% vs. 97%). The approach could help resource-challenged providers triage a large number of screening cases down to a few that need expert interpretation.
- Philips and Imricor’s Interventional MRI Launch: Philips and Imricor are partnering to launch a new solution for MRI-guided interventional cardiology procedures. The package combines a Philips 1.5T MRI scanner and Cardiac MR Suite software with Imricor’s NorthStar interventional MR mapping and guidance system, electrophysiology recorder/stimulator, and catheters. The combination will enable clinicians to better visualize cardiac anatomy and arrhythmia substrate while tracking catheters, evaluating treatment response, and performing other interventional tasks in the MRI suite.
- Asian American Breast Cancer Risk: Nearly 1 in 8 women in the U.S. will develop breast cancer, but the risk is different for women of different racial backgrounds. And broad ethnic categories like “Asian American” may be masking big differences in breast cancer risk that could help inform better screening practices. In a study published in CANCER, American Cancer Society researchers discovered differences of up to 2X in breast cancer risk between different Asian groups, and recommended interventions that are more targeted than a one-size-fits-all approach.
- AI Model Predicts No-Shows: It’s incredibly disruptive – and expensive – when patients don’t show up for their imaging exams. So researchers from University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center developed an AI-based calculator to predict radiology no-shows using variables like distance from facility, patient demographics, and clinical factors, with a special emphasis on social determinants of health. In testing on 10k patients over two years, the model had an AUROC of 0.76 for predicting no-shows. Targeted outreach toward the top 20% of at-risk patients could save up to $6.2M.
- Delays Hit Las Vegas Imaging Center: The VA isn’t the only imaging provider experiencing delays in radiology report turnaround. An article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal claims that patients at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging have seen significantly longer wait times for their results after the center was acquired by Intermountain Health in January. One patient reportedly was told “You have to wait in line. There’s no doctors to read the scans.” Nevada has the lowest number of radiologists per capita of any U.S. state, at 9 per 100k people.
- Radiology Disputes Drive Up IDR Costs: A new study on costs related to the independent dispute resolution (IDR) process of the federal No Surprises Act is laying some of the blame on radiology. An article in Health Affairs Forefront found that in 2025, providers filed 2.6M disputes, up 77% from 2024, with over $22B in total costs incurred since 2022. Disputes are disproportionately filed by large physician organizations, with Radiology Partners accounting for 30% of disputes. RP had a “win rate” of 96% in its IDR challenges.
- Physician Groups Hit Back at IDR Claims: Meanwhile, a coalition of physician groups that includes the ACR hit back at claims that providers are driving up costs through the independent dispute resolution (IDR) process. The groups said the methodology used in the study was “deeply flawed” by relying on inaccurate qualifying payment amounts that are unreasonably low. Providers are resorting to the IDR process because insurers “increasingly refuse to negotiate fair rates, offer inadequate reimbursement, and narrow physician networks,” the coalition claimed.
- ARPA-H Funds Robotic Research: The U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is funding new research into the use of robotic technologies to treat stroke patients. Under its Autonomous Interventions and Robotics program, ARPA-H is awarding contracts to vendors to develop robotic systems that can perform surgical interventions independently, as well as “microbots” that can carry out interventional procedures on their own. Radiology companies receiving funds include Siemens Healthineers and Philips.
- GE Lands Intermountain Install: GE HealthCare deployed its new Signa Sprint Elite 1.5T MRI scanner at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah. The hospital is just the second in the U.S. to deploy Sprint Elite, a wide-bore scanner GE launched at RSNA 2025 and that received FDA clearance earlier this year. Intermountain is highlighting the scanner’s suitability for cardiac and oncology applications, as well as its AI-based data reconstruction for improved image quality.
- Canadians to Protest Pay-to-Play Healthcare: A coalition of Canadian healthcare advocacy groups is holding a series of demonstrations around the country this week to protest a law going into effect in Alberta on September 1 allowing patients to pay for healthcare outside the country’s single-payer system. The law is designed to help Alberta clear some of the backlog for medical care like imaging exams, but opponents claim it will create a “two-tier, American-style” healthcare system with unequal access.
- Alliance Advances Brain-Computer Interfaces: Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) like Elon Musk’s Neuralink could push the boundaries of human-machine interaction, but they may not work well in MRI’s magnetic field. To address the issue, researchers at Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare and Tianjin University worked together to create uMR ShenGuan, an MRI scanner optimized to reduce challenges previously encountered in BCI research. While the scanner is geared toward research over clinical practice for now, it could be used with BCIs to improve treatment of psychiatric, neurological, and auditory disorders.
- This Is Your Brain on Mushrooms: What does the human brain look like while tripping on psilocybin mushrooms? An international group of researchers wanted to find out, so they performed functional MRI and EEG tests on 62 people and published the results in Nature. They measured brain responses to stimuli like meditation, movies, and music (researchers didn’t mention what music was played, but we bet Pink Floyd was in there somewhere). Some 50% of participants “ranked the experience among the most meaningful of their lives.”
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The Future of Radiology Is Operational Transformation
In this webinar at 12 pm ET on Tuesday, September 29, discover how leading radiology groups are increasing throughput, reducing report turnaround times, improving workload equity, and helping attract and retain radiologists through a new approach to enterprise radiology operations.
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AI-Assisted Radiology Reporting
Move beyond legacy radiology reporting with AI-assisted reporting from Mosaic Technologies. See how Mosaic Reporting can help your organization move faster today while building for tomorrow.
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From Image Exchange to Enterprise Interoperability
Easily share, access, and exchange any medical image with solutions from Medicom. Deliver critical studies directly into the EHR to ease clinician burden, simplify your tech stack, and unlock the research potential hidden in clinical imaging data.
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- CAC Reimbursement for Routine Chest CT: The new Medicare code G0680 brings reimbursement for coronary artery calcium (CAC), enabling health systems to transform routine imaging into a proactive cardiovascular screening tool. Use Riverain’s customizable ROI calculator to demonstrate its potential financial impact on your operations.
- Cutting-Edge PET/CT to Support Theranostics: Theranostics is an exciting new field that combines diagnostics and therapy. Discover how Florida Theranostics is using United Imaging’s uMI Panorama PET/CT scanner to establish a high-quality level of patient care.
- Radiology Without Limits: Watch this video from Visage Imaging to learn how their Visage 7 solution enables you to achieve radiology without limits – performance, reliability, and innovation.
- 3T Wide-Bore MRI Delivers Power with Purpose: Translate groundbreaking discoveries into patient care with SIGNA Bolt, GE HealthCare’s visionary 3T MRI scanner that empowers leading-edge research for real patient care.
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- Modernize PACS Without a Rip-and-Replace Budget: The question isn’t what modernization costs. It’s what standing still costs in support contracts, migration debt, and risk you already carry. Mach7’s framework gives CIOs and imaging leaders a phased path they can defend to finance. Read the framework.
- Advanced Women’s Health with Smarter Breast Imaging: Meeting the demands of advanced women’s health requires an imaging ecosystem that helps radiologists work efficiently, supports diagnostic confidence, and expands access to specialized breast imaging expertise. Discover how Fujifilm’s comprehensive portfolio of women’s imaging solutions can help.
- KailoFlow Replaces the Patchwork: KailoFlow from Kailo Medical gives you one platform from digital patient intake to final structured report, with automated measurement transfer, built-in TI-RADS and BI-RADS calculations, and pre-drafted reporting across any device, any site.
- More than an Image. The Big Picture: AGFA HealthCare understands that striking the critical balance between clinical efficiency and quality delivery of patient care starts with the clinician experience. Learn how their Enterprise Imaging platform makes the complex simple.
- The Economics of AI-Assisted Heart Failure Diagnosis: An AI-assisted diagnostic pathway for diagnosing heart failure saved $1.4k per patient – without compromising diagnostic accuracy. Read the white paper from Us2.ai.
- Why HealthPartners Has Relied On Merge for 20 Years: Over two decades, Health Partners has never wavered from Merge as their imaging solutions provider. Read this article to learn how their relationship transcends the typical vendor-client dynamic.
- RAF’s Four-Month Go-Live With Rad AI: Roni Talukdar, MD, president of Radiologic Associates of Fredericksburg, shares his experience implementing Rad AI and reflects on the speed and impact of deployment. Watch the video.
- How AI Powers Lung Cancer Screening: Discover how DeepHealth’s AI and workflow applications are helping radiologists report findings efficiently and with consistency in the U.K. national lung cancer screening program, finding cancers earlier at more treatable stages.
- What Everyone Should Know About Radiology: What should every medical student know about radiology? In this episode of The Joys of Radiology, a Medality Radiology Report podcast, Gautam Agrawal, MD, sits down with three Johns Hopkins radiology residents to discuss what residency actually looks like.
- How Cloud-Based Enterprise Imaging Accelerates Insights: Cloud-based enterprise imaging shortens the path from scan to diagnosis by centralizing data, automating workflows, and enabling AI-driven prioritization. Find out how Intelerad’s cloud-native imaging platform can help you change healthcare delivery.
- Don’t Leave Your Patients in the Dark: Top institutions like Duke and Northwell Health are using patient-friendly radiology reports from Scanslated to boost patient engagement and satisfaction. Discover how Scanslated can work for you today.
- Can You Meet Conditional MRI Requirements? How confident are you that your MR practice can meet the MR Conditional requirements? Philips has developed ScanWise Implant to simplify scanning patients with MR Conditional implants. Learn more on this page.
- RT Efficiency – Streamlining Workflows with eForms: Paper worksheets are still slowing down radiology departments. In this clip from The Imaging Wire Show, Altamont Software executives discuss how much paper technologists still handle day-to-day, and how digital eForms let RTs enter exam data electronically – reducing errors.
- Lower Doses, Higher Quality: What if you could reduce radiation exposure without compromising accuracy in MSK imaging? Discover a system from Siemens Healthineers that supports dose-saving strategies while delivering high-quality images for confident diagnoses and maintaining clinical accuracy.
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