A great potential benefit exists for the use of smartphone medical apps for medical doctors, patients, and trainees. NHLBI may help support to test and/or develop smartphone apps in clinical studies and medical training.

What is the pathogenesis and appropriate treatment for subjects with chronic respiratory symptoms or imaging abnormalities who do not have overt airflow obstruction (and thus are not currently categorized as having COPD)?

Critical challenges in the assessment of aortic aneurysms are: (1) Availability of reliable animal models that simulate the human pathology, (2) Availability of molecular imaging resources – identification of biomarkers, development of targeted imaging probes and pre-clinical imaging methods, and plasma markers that predict whether an aneurysm is prone to rupture or dissection, (3) Bringing together a wide array of multi-disciplinary... more »

It is essential to develop clinically viable, non-invasive, less expensive technologies for the surveillance of allograft rejection in heart transplant patients. Critical challenges that exist in the near term or long term surveillance after transplant is the unavailability of molecular and cellular level markers that can be non-invasively imaged and quantified detect rejection and thus improve patient survival. Development... more »

Sarcoidosis affects individuals of all races and ages and both genders, although it tends to cause significant morbidity and mortality for people in the prime of their productive life. Women, minorities and underserved populations tend to be more affected. Recent studies suggest that sarcoidosis and its severe manifestations, such as cardiac, neurologic and end stage pulmonary disease' are increasing, While the current... more »

MRI is a lengthy and expensive exam, but this is mainly because it has no ionizing radiation and is uniquely safe and uniquely versatile, leading to imaging sessions that last for 1/2 to 1 and 1/2 hours, with multiple scans, views and contrasts. MRI could provide better quality screening scans, compared to x-ray, ct or echo, in 5 minutes, without ecg-gating and lengthy preparation of the patient. However, the optimal... more »