Cardiac Imaging and Diagnostic Tests

Patients who come to Englewood Hospital benefit from access to the most advanced digital cardiac catheterization imaging technology in the region, and our expert team of board-certified interventional cardiologists.

Cardiac catheterization is performed in Englewood Hospital’s cardiac catheterization laboratory. During this procedure, we insert a very small tube—a catheter—into a blood vessel in your arm, groin, or neck, and extend it to your heart. Contrast dye injected through the catheter shows how your heart’s blood vessels are working.

This test can help us identify and treat blocked arteries, measure blood pressure and oxygen, and evaluate heart function.

A Cardiopulmonary Exercise Stress Test (CPET) estimates how much oxygen your heart pumps and the amount of air you are breathing during exercise. This helps our medical team determine your heart and lung capacity to perform exercise.

How it works: You will walk on a treadmill while breathing into a mouthpiece, which collects and measures the air you breathe. You will also have EKG electrodes attached to your chest, which will record the electrical activity of your heart. Blood pressures will be taken periodically throughout the test. A physician will be present, in addition to an exercise physiologist, to monitor these measurements. The exercise you perform will start easy and become progressively more difficult as time goes on; the test will continue until you become tired.

For this heart imaging test, we administer a dye to make your blood vessels visible. We then use special X-ray equipment to produce pictures of your coronary arteries, aorta, pulmonary veins, and pulmonary arteries to see if they are blocked or narrowed by calcified plaque, an indicator of coronary artery disease.

Over time, coronary artery disease puts you at increased risk for heart attack. Scans can detect calcium deposits in plaque; the result is known as your cardiac calcium score. The amount of calcium indicates the extent of coronary artery disease.

During an echocardiogram, a healthcare provider—typically a radiographer or sonographer—uses high-frequency sound waves to create a moving picture of your heart.

Also called an “echo,” this painless, noninvasive test checks how the valves and chambers of your heart are working. It can also reveal the size of the heart, the thickness and movement of the heart wall, and any blood clots in the heart.

Transesophageal Echocardiogram

This test is used if your care team needs more detailed images than a standard echocardiogram can produce.

During a TEE, a tiny transducer is attached to a thin tube that is introduced into your esophagus.  Because the esophagus travels close to the heart, this allows us to obtain very clear images of your heart and its valves.

During an electrocardiogram, often called an “EKG” or “ECG,” a healthcare technician places sensors on your chest, arms, and legs while you lie still. The sensors are connected to an electrocardiogram machine, which monitors and creates a three-dimensional map of your heart’s electrical rhythm.

This painless, noninvasive test can reveal signs of heart disease, predict a heart attack, or confirm that a heart attack has occurred.

A nuclear cardiology study, or nuclear heart scan, is a type of imaging test that helps your doctor diagnose heart conditions and plan the best treatment for you.

Your doctor may recommend a nuclear heart scan to:

• Evaluate symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath
• Diagnose coronary artery disease (narrowing of the blood vessels that supply the heart)
• Assess your risk for a heart attack
• See how a heart attack or infection affected your heart
• Evaluate how well a treatment, including a heart transplant, is working

Nuclear cardiology tests include the following:

• Myocardial perfusion imaging, also called nuclear stress testing, is used to show blood flow and identify heart conditions.
• Radionuclide ventriculography shows how well your heart is pumping. It measures the amount of blood pumped out of your heart with each beat, called your ejection fraction.
• Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is used to learn about the flow of blood to your heart and how your heart is functioning. It also helps assess the damage from any past heart attacks.

During these noninvasive tests, we insert a small amount of radioactive tracer into a vein. When the tracer reaches the heart, a sensitive device called a gamma camera detects the radiation and takes pictures and video of the heart.

Nuclear cardiology uses minimally invasive methods, which means you won’t need incisions and you’ll be able to perform your normal activities after the test.

During this test you wear a Holter or cardiac telemetry (MCT) monitor—a small portable device with sensors that attach to your skin—usually for 24–48 hours.

Unlike a regular EKG, which shows your heart’s activity at one moment in time, an ambulatory EKG shows us how your heart functions over a longer period, and while you’re going about your daily routine.

If your arrhythmia is infrequent, we may ask you to carry or wear a small cardiac event monitor for a few days or weeks. When you feel symptoms, you hold the recorder against your chest and press a button. These devices record electrical activity (ECG) when you have symptoms.

During this test—sometimes called a treadmill test, exercise cardiac stress test, or ECST—we attach a monitor with electrodes to your chest to record your heart function as you exercise on a treadmill or stationary bike. Your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and electrical activity are monitored and recorded, along with any symptoms you may experience, to look for indications of coronary artery disease and angina (chest pain caused by a shortage of oxygen reaching the heart muscle).

During this test, a provider will inject a small amount of radioactive dye into the bloodstream while you’re exercising. A special camera then detects the radiation and produces images of your heart that measure blood flow.

Similar to an exercise stress test, this diagnostic tool helps our physicians spot signs of heart conditions such as coronary artery disease (CAD).

During the test, you lie on a table that is tilted upright while we monitor your symptoms, blood pressure, and ECG. If you experience fainting spells, we may use this test to observe how your body responds to a change in position.

We may test your blood to measure substances in your body, such as cardiac enzymes, C-reactive protein, triglycerides and cholesterol, and more. These biomarkers can confirm whether you’ve had a heart attack and how serious the damage is. They can also tell us how long your blood takes to clot and help us assess your future risk for disease.

An X-ray uses waves of radiation to create a picture of the heart, lungs, and bones of the chest. This test checks for heart enlargement or fluid build-up in your lungs after a heart attack.

This minimally invasive procedure maps the heart’s electrical system using electrode catheters to identify the location of the arrhythmia. We place these thin, flexible tubes in a vein or artery in your leg and move them into the heart to record electrical activity.

MRI uses a magnetic field to produce detailed pictures. An MRI test can evaluate heart function as well as heart tissue in people with thickened or very weak heart muscle (heart failure). We often use this tool to see the heart in greater detail than possible with a standard echocardiogram.