DIREQT2Heart

📍 CCMAR - Portugal




About DIREQT2Heart


A DIRect QuanTitative assessment of Heart disease with magnetic resonance imaging. It is a project that Prompt diagnosis of coronary heart disease to prevent early mortality. The consortium is led by Teresa Matias Correia from CCMAR and includes Rita Nunes from Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento (ISR), Carlos Alberola-López from University of Valladolid and Borja Ibáñez from Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC).


Coronary heart disease

Coronary heart disease (CHD), which is the leading cause of death worldwide, occurs when blood flow to the heart becomes restricted. Early detection of this condition is of paramount importance for preventing life-threatening events.


Cardiac MRI 🧲

Our research is also focused on the development of accelerated acquisition, undersampled reconstruction and motion correction techniques for free-breathing cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for diagnosing cardiovascular disease. We are particularly interested in the application of these methods to 3D whole-heart cardiac MRI and quantitative first-pass myocardial perfusion and their translation into clinical practice.


Deep Learning 👩🏻‍💻

Our active research projects aim to develop deep learning-based methods for image reconstruction from accelerated scans, automated detection, segmentation and classification tasks for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy response prediction.

Recent News

News Entry
Dec 202515

Melhores imagens, menos enfartes

News Entry
Sep 202526

How old is your heart?

News Entry
May 202515

DIREQT2Heart team at #ISMRM2025 in Honolulu, Hawaii

News Entry
Jan 20241

Revolucionar a Imagiologia Médica

News Entry
Sep 202329

PrevenciĂłn, diagnĂłstico y tratamiento: la ciencia se vuelca en el cuidado del corazĂłn

News Entry
Apr 202317

ÂżCĂłmo mejorar la detecciĂłn precoz de las enfermedades coronarias?


People đź“°

Teresa Matias Correia (Project Leader) CCMAR

Rita Nunes - IST-ID

Carlos Alberola-LĂłpez - University of Valladolid

Borja Ibáñez - CNIC

👉 Full team


Publications đź“°

Journal publications and conference proceedings

👉 Full list

Top Five Journal Papers


E Moya-Sáez, RM Menchón-Lara, J Sánchez-González, CN Carvaho, A Gaspar, C Real, C Galán-Arriola, RG Nunes, B Ibanez, TM Correia, C Alberola-López. K-CC-MoCo: a fast k-space-based respiratory motion correction for highly accelerated first-pass perfusion cardiovascular MR. Magn Reson Med 2026; 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/mrm.70287.

A Devesa, V Fuster, I García-Lunar, B Oliva, A García-Alvarez, A Moreno-Arciniegas, R Vazirani, C Pérez-Herreras, P Marina, H Bueno, L Fernández-Friera, A Fernández-Ortiz, J Sanchez-Gonzalez, B Ibanez. Coronary Microvascular Function in Asymptomatic Middle-Aged Individuals With Cardiometabolic Risk Factors. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging 2024; S1936-878X(24):00342-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcmg.2024.08.002.

A Gaspar, NA Silva, AM Ferreira, RG Nunes. Repeatability of Open-MOLLI: An open-source inversion recovery myocardial T1 mapping sequence for fast prototyping. Magn Reson Med. 2024; 92: 741-750. https://doi.org/10.1002/mrm.30080.

T Correia. Inteligência artificial na ressonância magnética cardíaca – o impulso que faltava? LIFESAVING Magazine #29 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10418257.

M Obando, A Bassi, N Ducros, G Mato, Teresa M. Correia. Model-based deep learning framework for accelerated optical projection tomography. Sci Rep 13, 21735 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-47650-3.