The University of Ottawa Heart Institute offers a multimodality cardiac imaging fellowship which covers nuclear cardiology, cardiac positron emission topography (PET), cardiac computed tomography (CT), and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Candidates may apply to the multimodality stream, or they may tailor their fellowship training to the modality or modalities most pertinent to their future practice.
Training will include clinical duties and research and education objectives. Training duration corresponds to learning objectives and is a minimum of one year.
Objectives
The objective of the Adult Cardiac Imaging Program is to attain clinical expertise for optimal health care delivery.
Clinical duties
The Heart Institute’s cardiac imaging department is a high-volume centre with dedicated cardiac infrastructure. The centre receives many referrals. Current annual volumes by modality are presented below.
- Nuclear cardiology: 3,500
- Cardiac PET: 3,500
- Cardiac CT: 4,000
- Cardiac MRI: 2,500
- Treadmill stress tests: 2,100
- Echocardiography: 26,000
Our clinical training program complies with the different levels of training (COCATs and CCS Level 1, 2 and 3). There is ample clinical volume to satisfy the minimum training requirements.
Education
In addition to self-directed learning, teaching rounds occur Monday to Thursday. Teaching will include a core curriculum of clinical and fundamental science as well as case reviews, journal clubs, research seminars, etc. The trainee will participate in regular educational/teaching sessions, journal clubs, and reviews of current medical literature.
Research
All fellows will participate in or support research in cardiac imaging. Trainees are expected to initiate and develop a research protocol leading to data collection, analysis, abstract preparation and manuscript submission during the fellowship training program.
Facility and faculty
- The trainee will be a team member of the department of cardiac imaging at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, a large tertiary care cardiac facility serving patients in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. The University of Ottawa Heart Institute has inpatient and outpatient services, critical care and coronary care units, cardiac catheterization/angiographic facilities, a cardiac surgical program, and an active emergency room.
- The cardiac imaging department is in the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and has formed out of collaborative efforts between cardiologists, nuclear medicine MDs, and radiologists.
- The teaching faculty is comprised of clinicians (cardiologists, radiologists and nuclear medicine and imaging MDs) and physicists with international recognition as leaders in cardiac imaging.
- The cardiac imaging department has a full complement of CT/X-ray technologists, nuclear technologists, nursing staff, physicists and radiochemists.
Clinical and educational objectives for cardiac imaging
- Radiation biology and radiation safety
- MRI safety
- Imaging fundamentals
- Physics and instrumentation
- Radiochemistry and radiopharmaceuticals
- Test indications/contraindications
- Patient selection and preparation
- Cardiology as it relates to imaging
- Cardiac and non-cardiac anatomy
- Cardiac physiology, hemodynamics and metabolism
- Imaging procedures, acquisition, protocols, sequence composition and planning
- Image reconstruction and post processing
- Image interpretation
- Artifacts
Research objectives for cardiac imaging
- Development of concepts
- Development of scientific methodology
- Submission to ethics
- Conduct of the study (including recruitment and supervision and follow-up as necessary)
- Data acquisition
- Image and data analysis
- Interpretation of results
- Presentation of results
- Manuscript preparation