Professor Chiara Bucciarelli-Ducci

Professor Bucciarelli-Ducci received her undergraduate degree (2001) and postgraduate fellowship in cardiology (2005) from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy.

She then undertook courses and fellowships at Northwestern University in Chicago, University of Zurich, Harvard Medical School, Oxford University and more recently an MSc in Health Economics from LSE. She worked at the Royal Brompton Hospital as a senior CMR clinical and research fellow in 2006-2010 and in 2012 she was awarded a PhD in CMR from the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College.

She was appointed a consultant cardiologist at the Bristol Heart Institute and University of Bristol where she was headhunted in 2010 to build the CMR programme. In 2021 she then returned to Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals to lead the CMR clinical academic programme at Harefield.

She is associate professor at King College London, School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging. Since 2019 she is also the CEO of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, the leading international association in the field of CMR with HQ in the USA. Previously, she held leadership positions in the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging and European Society of Cardiology with whom she continues to have strong collaborations.

She is an invited expert by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) of the European Union (on contrast agents) and by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of United Nations (on medical imaging without use of radiations). She is in the scientific advisory board of the National Heart Centre Singapore and Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in Spain. She is the deputy editor of the European Heart Journal (one of the most important cardiology journals worldwide) for the cardiovascular imaging section.

She is recipient of numerous prestigious prizes/ awards, including the NHS national Clinical Excellence Award (bronze)(2021), winner Imperial College Alumni Emerging Leaders award (2022), winner Excellence in Education Outstanding Mid-Career Educator Award, European Society of Cardiology (2023), Finalist Wesleyan Prize, Medical Women Federation UK (2017), Winner William Harvey Prize, Italian Society of Cardiology (2011), Finalist Melvin Judkins Young Clinical Imaging Investigator Award, American Heart Association (2010), and others.

Professor Bucciarelli-Ducci is an key, international opinion leader on the use of CMR in cardiovascular medicine and has over 20 years of clinical experience and expertise, having performed over 30,000 scans to date.

Her career focuses on improving the care of patients by improving the identification of heart abnormalities in a wide range of conditions and symptoms, leveraging her expertise but also through research and innovation. She believes on the importance of an accurate diagnosis which leads to improved patient management and thus prognosis.

She is in an expert in cardiovascular MRI testing for the following conditions:

• cardiovascular disease in women
• chest pain – coronary artery disease and INOCA (ischemia with no obstructive coronary arteries)
• palpitations and arrythmias
• heart failure and cardiomyopathies
• MINOCA (myocardial infarction with no obstructive coronary arteries), myocarditis and takotsubo syndrome
• valvular heart disease
• hypertensive heart disease
• cardio-oncology and cardio-rheumatology

She also performs cardiovascular MRI testing in patients with cardiac devices (pacemakers and ICD’s).

Dr Bucciarelli-Ducci has an extensive academic track record with over 270 publications to date in major international cardiology and imaging journals in a range of cardiovascular conditions. She has authored clinical practice guidelines and expert consensus papers for both the European Society of Cardiology and American College of Cardiology that cardiologists use worldwide to manage and treat patients.

You can view a full list of her publications here.

Our specialist provides care at these locations:

Harefield Hospital and Wimple Street.