Spotlight on Ron Blankstein

Meet Ron Blankstein, MD, MSCCT, 14^th president of SCCT

Ron Blankstein is associate director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Program and director of Cardiac Computed Tomography at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. A past president of SCCT, Dr. Blankstein received the 2025 SCCT Arthur S. Agatston Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Award for his groundbreaking contributions to preventive cardiology and his leadership in advancing cardiovascular CT.

During his time as president of the Society, Dr. Blankstein said he was particularly proud of four achievements:

1. The dramatic expansion of educational programs within the Society, “essentially ensuring that there’s something for everyone when it comes to learning more about cardiac CT.”
2. A strong focus on advocacy to improve reimbursement for cardiac CT, ultimately leading to increased technical fee payments for services in the U.S.
3. The inclusion of cardiac CT in many international guidelines — “ranging from the use of CT in structural heart disease, prevention, and of course chest pain” — which he credits to “all the great science that many in our community produced.”
4. The global expansion of the Society’s outreach efforts.

“SCCT now is a strong society of folks from all around the world who all care deeply about cardiac CT,” he said. “I personally love coming to the SCCT meeting every year to see all my friends and colleagues in the field — my prior mentors, my prior mentees — there’s no place like SCCT and I am so thrilled to see how well the society is doing and how well the field is doing, now 20 years after we started it all.”

And all of that doesn’t include the accomplishment of leading the organization through the uncertainty caused by a global pandemic, a feat he credits to everyone but himself.

“My term as SCCT president started in 2019 in Baltimore. At that time, it was the largest meeting we had ever held. It was a wonderful meeting, but little did we realize that only half a year later we were going to be in the midst of a global pandemic that would essentially shut down the world.

“The fact that we continued to grow during the pandemic at a time that many other organizations struggled is a direct testament to our leaders, the SCCT staff and our CEO Joanne Olson.”

A prolific researcher with more than 400 publications, he has shaped the field through his expertise in multimodality imaging, leadership in the 2021 Guideline for the Evaluation and Diagnosis of Chest Pain, and dedication to improving patient access to cardiovascular CT.

Within SCCT, Dr. Blankstein has made a lasting impact by pioneering and leading the annual Prevention Symposium, founding and championing efforts to achieve Medicare reimbursement for cardiovascular CT, and chairing the Future Leaders Program, now preparing to welcome its sixth cohort.

Dr. Ron Blankstein (center-left) receives the 2025 SCCT Arthur S. Agatston Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Award from Dr. Agatston (center-right) with SCCT President Kavitha Chinnaiyan and Immediate Past President Maros Ferencik at SCCT2025 in Montréal, Canada.