Imaging & Core Lab

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.

Dr. Nadira Hamid is scientific director of the Echocardiography Core Lab at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation and director of interventional echocardiography at the Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute. She is board certified in both echocardiography and cardiac computed tomography.

Dr. Hamid earned her medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in Dublin and holds postgraduate qualifications from the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom. She completed her residencies in Dublin, followed by a cardiology fellowship at the National Heart Centre Singapore. She later received research training and a Master of Clinical Investigation from the National University of Singapore, then completed an advanced echocardiography and interventional echocardiography fellowship focused on structural heart interventions at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York.

Her research contributions include work on multiple clinical trials such as the TRILUMINATE, JenaValve and Ancora trials. Dr. Hamid is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Society of Echocardiography, the European Society of Cardiology and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

Dr. Alan Bank is director of research at MHI East at United Hospital, an associate professor of cardiology at the University of Minnesota and an associate member of the graduate faculty in biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He has directed the research division and the echo core laboratory at MHI East (formerly UHVC) for more than 20 years.

Dr. Bank has served as principal investigator in more than 100 research studies and has published more than 100 papers. His clinical interests are heart failure and echocardiography, and his primary research focus is cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). He has developed a novel noninvasive technology for measuring electrical dyssynchrony in heart failure patients with CRT and has submitted five patents on this technology.

He is currently directing several clinical studies that use this technology to optimize programming in CRT patients and plans to use data from these studies to support commercialization efforts. Dr. Bank is a founding member and serves on the board of the Joseph F. Novogratz Family Heart Rhythm Center at MHIF.

Dr. Miho Fukui is a cardiologist and researcher who began her medical career in Hyogo, Japan, where she earned both her medical degree and PhD. She specializes in echocardiography and completed her cardiology fellowship in Japan before moving to the United States in October 2017.

At the University of Pittsburgh, she served as a postdoctoral research scholar, focusing on advanced multimodality imaging techniques, including cardiac CT and MRI. She joined the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation in September 2018 and currently serves as an associate scientific director for the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center and Core Lab.

Dr. Fukui’s passion for multimodality imaging has led to more than 70 peer-reviewed original investigations and several book chapters. She is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and is actively involved in training workshops.

Matthew Henry serves as core lab program director for MHIF’s Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center and Core Lab. He leads the growing imaging core team and oversees day-to-day operations.

He brings a strong background in clinical research, with previous roles as a study coordinator and regulatory specialist at the University of Arkansas. Most recently, he served as associate director of clinical research and regulatory affairs at the IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network Data Coordinating and Operations Center. In that role, he developed and implemented clinical trial processes and training programs to support a network of sites across 18 states.

Henry holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Arkansas Tech University and a Master of Science in molecular oncology from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom.

Kristin serves as a strategic advisor to research across the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. She has led MHIF’s Imaging Core Lab since 2020 and will continue to support that team while expanding her impact across MHIF initiatives.

She also works closely with the Valve Science Center team, having previously led the valve team as program director before transitioning to the imaging team. Kristin is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a degree in physiology and Augsburg College’s physician assistant program. She came to MHIF from Medtronic, where she gained extensive experience in clinical research, therapy development and evidence dissemination.