The 4th Annual CT-guided PCI Summit

Dr. Yader Sandoval is an interventional cardiologist with the Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute and serves as co-chair of the Center for Coronary Artery Disease at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. He is also an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.

Dr. Sandoval is a physician-investigator focused on the diagnosis and management of patients with acute and chronic coronary syndromes and complex percutaneous coronary interventions. He has expertise in coronary artery disease, including coronary physiology, coronary imaging, coronary revascularization and cardiac biomarkers. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, with publications in The Lancet, JAMA, JACC and Circulation. He served on the writing committee for the 2025 AHA/ACC ACS guidelines and has held leadership roles such as chair of the SCAI/SCCT Scientific Roundtable on coronary computed tomography angiography to guide percutaneous coronary intervention and co-chair of the 2024 SCAI expert consensus statement on the management of patients with STEMI referred for primary PCI. He is also a member of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry Committee on Clinical Applications of Cardiac Biomarkers.

Additionally, Dr. Sandoval has served on the American College of Cardiology Interventional Section Leadership Council and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions Ischemic Heart Disease Council. A dedicated educator, he was selected for the 2022 ACC Emerging Faculty Leadership Academy and previously received the Mayo Clinic Interventional Cardiology Teacher of the Year Award. Dr. Sandoval is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and the European Society of Cardiology.

Dr. Emmanouil S. Brilakis is director of the Center for Complex Coronary Interventions at the Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute and chairman of the Center for Coronary Artery Disease at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

After graduating from Lycée Léonin de Patissia, Dr. Brilakis earned his medical degree from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. He completed training in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases and interventional cardiology at the Mayo Clinic, where he also earned a master’s degree in clinical research. He later obtained a PhD in clinical research from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. From 2004 to 2016, he served as director of the cardiac catheterization laboratories at the VA North Texas Health Care System and was a faculty member at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School from 2004 to 2018.

Dr. Brilakis leads a robust clinical research program focused on chronic total occlusion interventions, prevention and treatment of saphenous vein graft disease, lipid‑lowering therapies, management of procedural complications, intracoronary imaging, optimization of antiplatelet therapy following coronary stenting and radiation safety in the catheterization laboratory. He has authored or co‑authored more than 600 peer‑reviewed manuscripts and is the author of The Manual of CTO Interventions (now in its third edition) and The Manual of PCI. He also created the Manual of CTO Interventions and Manual of PCI YouTube series.

Dr. Brilakis serves on the board of the Cardiovascular Innovations Foundation, is an associate editor for Circulation and sits on the editorial boards of multiple journals and grant review committees. He is also an active international lecturer and procedural proctor. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the European Society of Cardiology and a Master Interventionalists of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions.

Dr. João L. Cavalcante serves as section head of cardiac imaging at the Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, the largest cardiology group practice in the Twin Cities. He is also director of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation’s Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center and Core Lab, where he oversees numerous multicenter clinical trials, and he holds the inaugural Innovation Chair for the Van Tassel Innovation Center.

He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Society of Echocardiography, the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography and the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance. His passion for multimodality imaging and his focus on valve and structural heart disease are reflected in his leadership of multiple randomized clinical trials in advanced imaging, the training of international scholars, more than 200 peer-reviewed original investigations, several book chapters, training workshops and frequent national and international lectures.

Carlos Collet, MD, PhD, is a distinguished interventional cardiologist and researcher recognized for his expertise in cardiovascular physiology, imaging and translational therapeutics. As of September 2025, he serves as director of cardiovascular imaging, physiology and translational therapeutics at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York.

Dr. Jonathon A. Leipsic is professor and chair of radiology and professor of cardiology at the University of British Columbia, where he also serves as a Canada Research Chair in advanced cardiopulmonary imaging.

He has authored more than 800 peer‑reviewed manuscripts and over 300 scientific abstracts and has edited two textbooks. A recognized international authority in cardiopulmonary imaging, he has delivered more than 150 invited lectures worldwide in the past four years.

Dr. Leipsic is a past president of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, received its Gold Medal in 2019 and has been named among the top 1% most impactful scientists globally by the Web of Science for five consecutive years (2019–2023). He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.

Dr. Victor Cheng completed his internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco, and his general cardiology fellowship at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. During his fellowship, he conducted cardiac imaging research under Dr. Daniel Berman, developing a strong interest in the role of cardiac CT in clinical care, particularly in image quality optimization and coronary plaque imaging. He then completed an additional year of advanced imaging training before joining the Cedars-Sinai cardiology faculty as an assistant professor.

Dr. Cheng has contributed to numerous institutional and collaborative research initiatives exploring multiple aspects of cardiac CT. In 2012, he joined the Oklahoma Heart Institute in Tulsa, where he established and led what became the state’s highest-volume cardiac CT program by 2017. He joined Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute in 2019 and was appointed director of cardiovascular CT in 2023.

A fellow of the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Cheng has authored more than 100 peer‑reviewed original research publications.