Imaging & Diagnostics

AAA screening uses a single bedside abdominal ultrasound to measure the widest part of your infrarenal aorta. An abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is defined as 3 cm or more. The…

Brain MRI volumetrics uses structural MRI to measure the size of specific brain regions. The usual targets are the hippocampus, the fluid-filled ventricles, and total gray and…

Cardiac MRI (CMR) is the gold standard for measuring how well your heart pumps. It quantifies the volumes of the left and right ventricles. It also measures the ejection fraction…

Carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) is an ultrasound measurement of the combined thickness of the two inner layers (intima and media) of your carotid artery wall. It acts as a…

Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) is a CT scan that, with an iodine contrast dye in your vein, builds a 3D picture of your heart's arteries. It shows both how narrow an artery is…

Echocardiography is a heart ultrasound, done either from the chest (TTE) or down the esophagus (TEE). It is the most widely used cardiac imaging test. It measures your…

Epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) is the visceral fat sitting right on your heart, between the heart muscle and its surrounding sac (the pericardium). It is unusual: it shares the…

FibroScan (vibration-controlled transient elastography, VCTE) measures how stiff your liver is, in kilopascals (kPa). It sends a low-frequency shear wave through the liver and…

Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is a non-invasive ultrasound test of how well your blood-vessel lining (the endothelium) works. It measures the percentage that your brachial (arm)…

MRI-PDFF (proton density fat fraction) measures the share of your liver's protons that belong to fat triglycerides, versus all its water and fat protons. The result is a…

Annual low-dose chest CT (LDCT) screens current and former heavy smokers for early-stage lung cancer, at an effective dose of roughly 1 to 2 mSv. The landmark US National Lung…

Mammography is a low-dose X-ray image of the breast (an effective dose of roughly 0.4 mSv per two-view, both-sides study). It is the only method with randomized-trial evidence…

MR spectroscopy (MRS) measures the chemistry of your tissues non-invasively, on a standard MRI scanner. It reads the slight frequency shifts in the MR signal to quantify specific…

These are PET scans that let doctors see Alzheimer's-related proteins in a living brain. Amyloid PET uses tracers (florbetapir, florbetaben, flutemetamol, all FDA-approved) to…

PET-FDG imaging maps where your body uses glucose. It uses a radioactive sugar tracer (18F-fluorodeoxyglucose), usually paired with a low-dose CT for anatomy (PET/CT). The…

Pulse wave velocity (PWV) measures how fast the pressure wave from each heartbeat travels along your arteries. It is the non-invasive gold standard for arterial stiffness. The…

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) takes ultra-detailed cross-section images of your retina, down to the micrometer. It lets doctors measure the thickness of retinal layers, like…

Dermoscopy (also called dermatoscopy) uses a handheld lens at about 10x magnification. With polarized or immersion light, it reveals pigment patterns and tiny blood vessels under…

Whole-body MRI (WB-MRI) scans you from head to pelvis (brain, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis) in one session, with no radiation. It takes about 45 to 90 minutes and shows soft…