The paper describes the use of a high-resolution MRI method to look at atherosclerotic plaque in the coronary arteries that is insensitive to motion artifacts from the motion of the heart or respiration. It blacks out the bright signal from the flowing blood in the lumen of the coronary artery to reveal the atherosclerotic vessel wall. This "black blood" technique has become the preferred research noninvasive method to study plaque buildup in the arteries.

  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

Heart disease is the number one killer in the Western world. We now know that most heart attacks are not only caused by clogged heart arteries (pipes). Clogged pipes do cause chest pain and other unpleasant symptoms, but they are responsible for no more than 15% of heart attacks. Instead, the deadlier culprits lie embedded in the walls of the pipes themselves: deposits of plaques (fat) that don’t cause symptoms, since they don’t dam up or stop blood flow to the heart. However, they can rupture without warming and lead to blood clots. These blood clots either dissipate quickly or may block blood flow to the heart causing an attack. Right now standard screening tests used to detect signs of cardiovascular problems simply are not sophisticated enough to locate or are too invasive. Our paper demonstrated a technique using magnetic resonance imaging that does not carry any risk or invasiveness that can look directly at the wall of the heart arteries and has the potential to detect the diseases that carry danger.

  How did you become involved in this research?

I am fortunate to collaborate with one of the leading cardiologists and scientists in this field, Dr. Valentin Fuster, who stimulated me into looking into noninvasive imaging technologies for the early detection of coronary artery disease. The support of the leadership at Mount Sinai such as Dr. Burton Drayer (Chairman of Radiology), and the efforts of my research team have been critical in the success of this work, as has the participation of the National Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and of the Radiological Society of North America.