U. Joseph Schoepf • Fabian Bamberg
Gorka Bastarrika • Balazs Ruzsics
Rozemarijn Vliegenthart
Editors

2014

Beyond Structure and Function

We are embarking on yet another exciting journey in our exploration of the determinants of the human body. Much has happened in the last decade that has decisively enhanced our abilities to noninvasively assess health and disease of the heart. Innovation in medicine ordinarily is a slow process; many years pass before a new test or procedure matures to the stage of universal acceptance and integration into clinical algorithms and guidelines. This process is welcome and necessary, as it ensures sufficient vetting of new techniques before they are applied on a large, universal scale and prevents unsuitable, unduly hyped fancies of the moment to enter the greater field of medicine. Because of its disruptive nature as the only noninvasive modality that enables interrogation of the coronary arteries, the use of cardiac CT has evolved at a breathtaking speed and has found entrance in general clinical practice, widespread acceptance, and inclusion into guidelines much faster than we could have dreamt of 15 years ago, when we embarked on applying modern era CT systems to cardiac imaging.