The NYU Heart Failure Program employs the full range of technologies for diagnosing and evaluating heart failure, from basic electrocardiograms to state-of-the-art scanners. Among the advanced tests we offer are:

• cardiac catheterization: an X-ray exam of the heart and its arteries, which is used to assess the location and extent of arterial blockage or narrowing.
• cardiopulmonary exercise testingcardiopulmonary exercise testing: the standard stress test for measuring how the heart, lungs, and muscle respond to exercise.
• dobutamine stress echocardiogram: a nonexercise stress test, which is used to detect blockage of blood flow to the heart. This test is useful for those who cannot tolerate a standard stress test, which requires patients to use an exercise treadmill. Instead, the intravenous drug dobutamine is used to make the heart beat faster, mimicking the effects of exercise on the heart.
• transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE): a noninvasive test that uses high-frequency sound waves to visualize the heart. In TEE, images are obtained through a probe inserted into the esophagus and positioned directly behind the heart, allowing better visualization of certain heart structures than with standard echocardiography.
• 64-slice cardiac CT angiography: a noninvasive test that uses X-rays to build highly detailed three-dimension pictures of cardiac anatomy, including coronary arteries, great arteries and veins, cardiac chambers, muscle, and valves.
• cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): a scanning technology that employs noninvasive magnetic fields and radio waves (instead of x-rays) to obtain two- and three-dimensional images of the body. Cardiac MRI provides details about damage to heart muscle after a heart attack, arterial blockage, and how various parts of the heart are functioning, among other information.