Center for Emerging Cardiovascular Technologies (CECT)

Setting the Pace in Cardiac Care

Coronary heart disease and its effects are the major cause of death and debility in the United States and abroad, affecting more than 6 million Americans and killing nearly 500,000 each year. Since its 1987 founding as a prestigious National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, Duke's Center for Emerging Cardiovascular Technologies (CECT) has pioneered numerous advances in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease.

Working at six different universities in partnership with several medical device industries, CECT researchers have put about $55 million in government, private, and industrial support to highly productive use. Thus far, their work has spawned three new spin-off companies, 75 collaborative research agreements, 28 new products, 17 patents, more than 50 patent disclosures, and many other new technologies and advances.

One highlight of the CECT's work is the development of new generations of internal defibrillators that use intricate sensing systems to detect dangerous arrhythmias of the heart and novel configurations of electrodes to correct them more effectively. These improvements have also made external defibrillators, used to help people who suffer heart attacks in public places, easier to use.

CECT researchers developed the first three-dimensional ultrasound system that allows physicians to examine any part of a beating heart in real time -- an achievement that earned the center a place in the Smithsonian Institution's permanent Research Collection. A key player in the ongoing development of 3D ultrasound systems is current CECT Director Olaf von Ramm, Thomas Lord Professor of Biomedical Engineering and an associate professor of medicine. Von Ramm earlier led the development of the two-dimensional diagnostic ultrasound technology now used at hospitals worldwide.

Now that the final cycle of major NSF support for its work is complete, von Ramm has restructured the CECT to emphasize laboratory training and corporate internships. Meanwhile, CECT researchers continue to unlock the secrets of the heart and to develop powerful new tools—from bioabsorbable stents to "fuzzy logic" defibrillator control to ever more precise cardiac imaging techniques -- that will keep it healthier.