Radiology

Message from the Department Chair

Welcome to the Department of Radiology

The Department of Radiology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, has a long tradition of innovation and excellence in all aspects of our tripartite mission to provide extraordinary care to our patients and to support this care with world-class education and research. The medical center has historically made great efforts to maintain state-of-the-art technical imaging capabilities and the recruitment of innovative investigative faculty has allowed us to offer a broad range of cutting-edge services to develop innovative new clinical programs. This creative nature has kept us in the vanguard of clinical and translational discovery across the imaging spectrum. To create a healthy future for our patients and their families, we strive to serve our patients compassionately and effectively with personalized, excellent care via a workforce committed to individual accountability, mutual respect and collaboration. In short, our department is characterized by optimism, excitement, talent and a commitment to work as a team to continuously improve our knowledge and clinical performance.

With a central role in clinical service, teaching, and research, the Radiology Department performs over 500,000 radiologic examinations each year, providing radiography, CT, ultrasound, MRI, nuclear medicine, angiography, and interventional radiology services to both the medical center as well as our affiliated health care facilities including BID-Needham Hospital and Harrington Memorial Hospital, and an expanding referral network. There are over 50 clinical diagnostic radiologists, 10 additional research faculty members, plus 30 clinical and post-doctoral research fellows. All residents, fellows, and faculty have appointments at Harvard Medical School.

Radiology being a dynamic and rapidly evolving specialty, the scope of our practice has expanded dramatically to include image-guided therapeutic options specifically in the field of Interventional Radiology (IR). Hospital-based IR facilities span two adjacent campuses and include 3 primary multi-modality advanced angiography suites (with intra-procedural CT capabilities and in-room ultrasound), 2 additional fluoroscopy rooms for vascular access, procedural CT suites, and a shared bi-plane angiography suite. Additionally, the section staffs an off-site outpatient vein center, an on campus dialysis access care center, and interprets diagnostic studies from an ICAVL-accredited vascular lab.

Research
The research program in the department has been largely translational, focusing on melding technical research capabilities and clinical know-how to advance the development and implementation of a variety of new applications in imaging and image-guided therapeutics.

Post-doctoral education
The Radiology residency provides four years of training in Diagnostic Imaging and there are 10 residency positions available annually. We also provide as many as 21 Clinical Imaging and Intervention fellowship positions in Abdominal Imaging, Body MRI, Breast Imaging, Cardiothoracic Imaging, Musculoskeletal Imaging, Neuroradiology, and Vascular and Interventional Radiology annually.

We are proud of the recognition we have received for our innovative teaching programs, our value-added research and the positive manner with which we impact the health of our patients. We are proud that we contribute to training the next generation of leaders in our field; 14 current radiology chairpersons trained in this department! We are proud of the clinical and educational quality and safety programs we have developed and shared, and we are proud that our just culture enables staff to willingly share their errors so that others may learn from these.