Imaging and Detection

Imagine your body is a giant, bustling city. For the city to work, it needs one massive main water pipe to carry energy and supplies to every single house. In your body, that "water main" is a giant tube called the aorta. Doctors call it the "Great Vessel" because it is the biggest and most important power line in your system.

For decades, doctors and runners shared a comfortable belief: if you ran marathons, your heart was bulletproof. This was known as the "Bassler hypothesis," the idea that finishing a 26-mile race gave you a "get out of jail free" card against heart disease. However, as modern heart scans improved, doctors were met with a shock. The very people who were the fittest on the planet—lifelong marathoners and cyclists—often showed more "rust" or buildup in their heart pipes (arteries) than people who sat on the couch.