5 Feb 2025

CT in endocarditis: A practical hands-on workshop | Wednesday 5 Feb | 8:00 - 12:00
Faculty
Ricardo Budde, MD, PhD, FSCCT
Alexander Hirsch, MD, PhD
Eefje Dalebout

Description
Endocarditis remains the deadliest cardiovascular disease and making the diagnosis is often difficult. In the past, imaging in suspected endocarditis relied almost solely on echocardiography. In the last decade however, cardiac CT and PET-CT have emerged as extremely valuable in diagnosing endocarditis complementing echocardiography and are now an integral part of the Guidelines.

In this workshop participants will obtain hands-on experience with reading a variety of cardiac CT scans of patients with (suspected) endocarditis. Participants will learn how to reconstruct the required imaging planes, identify characteristic CT findings in endocarditis, recognize pitfalls and artefacts and integrate CT findings with those of other imaging modalities. Case types will range from simple native valve endocarditis to complex cases of prosthetic valve and device endocarditis.

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CCTA-guided interventional procedures hands-on workshop | Wednesday 5 Feb | 13:00 - 17:00
Faculty
Ibrahim Danad, MD, PhD
Paul Knaapen, MD
Maksymilian Opolski, MD, PhD
Alexander Nap, MD, PhD, PharmD
Yvemarie Somsen, MD, PhD

Description

This cutting-edge, hands-on workshop dedicated to advancing your skills in coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA)-guided interventional procedures. This comprehensive program is designed for cardiologists, radiologists, and healthcare professionals looking to enhance their knowledge of CCTA and its role in guiding complex coronary interventions.

Workshop Highlights:

• Short introduction to coronary CTA: Understand the diagnostic accuracy, benefits, and common pitfalls associated with coronary CTA, ensuring you have a solid foundation to build upon.
• Hands-on workstation session: Dive into an interactive session on vessel walking, exploring advanced workstations and learning essential techniques to enhance your diagnostic capabilities.
• FFR-CT in guiding revascularization: Explore the revolutionary use of Fractional Flow Reserve from CT (FFR-CT) for more precise and effective revascularization strategies, improving patient outcomes.
• Guiding calcified lesions with CCTA: Master the art of navigating and treating challenging calcified lesions using CCTA for clearer visualization and better procedural planning.
• Bifurcation stenting techniques: Learn specialized CCTA-guided techniques for bifurcation stenting, enhancing your confidence in treating complex coronary bifurcations.
• CT-guided CTO procedures: Gain insights into the role of CT in guiding Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO) procedures and discover how CCTA can transform complex interventions into streamlined, successful outcomes.
• Non-invasive Heart Team approach: Explore the integration of CCTA with functional imaging to establish a non-invasive Heart Team approach, enhancing multidisciplinary decision-making and patient care.

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Deep learning for cardiac CT analysis workshop | Wednesday 5 Feb | 13:00 - 17:00
Faculty
Laura Alvarez
Soufiane Ben Haddou
Ivana Išgum, PhD
Dimitrios Karkalousos, PhD, BSc, MSc
Ioannis Lagogiannis, MSc
Sanyog Vyawahare

Description
Deep learning has been shown to outperform other automated image analysis and machine learning approaches. Hence, automated analysis of cardiac CT is increasingly performed by deep learning methods that have shown the ability to reach expert-level performance. Novel tools may alleviate the ever-increasing expert workload and enable large-scale research to provide new insights into diseases. However, new methodologies are also accompanied by new challenges. Especially, towards clinical and research utilization of AI technologies, an understanding of the (inner) workings of the used software solutions and their limitations is required.

This workshop is intended for radiologists and cardiologists at the beginner and intermediate levels with an interest in starting or intensifying the use of deep learning in their clinical research. The workshop will introduce basic concepts, recent developments, common pitfalls and unresolved challenges in the application of deep learning in medical image analysis.

Specifically, the workshop will introduce concepts of different AI methodologies used in the analysis of cardiac CT (e.g. convolutional neural networks, generative networks) as well as upcoming AI technology that is expected to further transform the field (e.g. foundation models).

Subsequently, the working principles of these methodologies will be illustrated with applications in cardiac CT analysis covering coronary calcium scoring, quantification of atherosclerotic plaque, stenosis assessment, CAD-RADS scoring, analysis of cardiac chambers and large arteries. For these, the stepwise analysis will be illustrated and supported by theoretical explanations. Attention will be paid to the illustration of method design choices and associated advantages, risks and limitations in the application. The workshop will be closed with identifying common strengths, risks and outlook on future opportunities and challenges.