Cardiac MRI for patients with pacemakers and defibrillators: Julián Vega Adauy speaks at the SIGNA Masters Cardiac Summit in Rio de Janeiro

At the GE HealthCare meeting, held alongside the SCMR world congress, the INCIC cardiologist showed how an imaging technique makes it possible to study people with implanted cardiac devices with cardiac MRI in daily practice.

Having a pacemaker or a defibrillator no longer has to keep a person out of a cardiac MRI scanner. That was the message Dr. Julián Vega Adauy, multimodality cardiac imaging cardiologist at INCIC, brought to GE HealthCare’s SIGNA Masters Cardiac Summit, held on Thursday 5 February 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, alongside the 29th Annual Scientific Sessions of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR).

His talk, “Expanding access: Wideband LGE for ICD and pacemaker imaging”, was part of a meeting moderated by Dr. Carlos Rochitte, president of the SCMR, that brought together cardiac MRI specialists from Brazil, France, Italy and Chile under the motto “Pioneering speed, precision, and access in Cardiac MR”.

An obstacle in the image

Pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators are electronic devices with metal parts. Inside the scanner they can distort the images, creating bright or dark patches that hide part of the heart. The problem mostly affects one of the most valuable images of the exam: the one that, thanks to the contrast agent, shows whether the heart muscle has scars or damaged areas.

The wideband technique changes the way the scanner acquires those images to reduce the distortion. This lets the physician see the heart muscle clearly even when the patient has an implanted device.

From research to everyday care

The talk focused on daily practice: making sure this technique is not reserved for research centres and reaches the routine care of patients who, because they have a device, often miss out on a test that can guide their diagnosis and treatment. INCIC is the group with the most experience in Chile in cardiac MRI for people with implanted devices.

INCIC was present on more than one stage that week: at the SCMR sessions, Drs. Javier López-Opitz and Hugo Martínez Fernández spoke about the development of cardiac MRI in Chile.