Today, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows more gentle, precise and cost-effective heart disease diagnosis. However, the method has limitations when examining children and patients with cardiac arrhythmia. A joint project of the Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing MEVIS and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry promises a solution for these limitations. Experts were able to accelerate the image acquisition process and expand the method’s applicability.

Merit Medical Systems Inc. and its ThinkRadial education program now offers a new vascular training model at events throughout the world.

Philips announced its collaboration with UCHealth, an integrated delivery network of five hospitals in Colorado and more than 100 ambulatory locations across three states, to consolidate and standardize UCHealth’s electronic health records (EHR), voice recognition systems and PACS onto specialized platforms for radiology and cardiology.

A new study appearing in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM) describes a highly efficient, protein-based method for turning fibroblasts — the most common cells in connective tissue — into cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs). The results could lead to a much-needed new source of cells for regenerating the heart. Equally exciting is that the technology also converts the fibroblasts directly to CPCs, skipping an in-between and significantly speeding up the process.

Preventing blood clots with drugs such as heparin has become a common practice for fighting some heart and lung conditions, and for certain surgeries. But patients who take them also need their blood to clot to heal incisions made during operations. Researchers are developing a new way to tackle this problem — by pairing snake venom with nanofibers. Their study using the therapy on rats appears in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.