Dr. Ferencik’s research focuses on the effective and efficient use of cardiac CT in the assessment of coronary atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease. He studies coronary atherosclerotic plaques and looks for morphologic plaque features associated with high-risk (vulnerable plaques). His research addresses several important questions such as whether novel CT technology allows detection of late enhancement and other coronary plaque features that correlate with high-risk plaques in OCT and culprit lesions of ACS and whether these features improve the diagnostic accuracy of CT for the diagnosis of ACS and prognosis of future cardiovascular events in large multicenter clinical trials (ROMICAT II and PROMISE). The epidemiologic component of this research will assess the predictive value of novel measures of coronary calcium for cardiovascular events in primary prevention in the Framingham Heart Study population.