Andrew Arai, MD is a senior investigator (tenured) and the Chief of the Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Laboratory in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, USA. He did undergraduate training at Cornell University and received a B.A. in Biophysics in 1982. He received his M.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1982. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the Oregon Health Science University between 1986 and 1989. He stayed at the Oregon Health Science University for a cardiology fellowship from 1989-1993. He has had a variety of positions at the National Institutes of Health since 1993 and became a tenured investigator in 2004. He currently leads a clinical cardiovascular magnetic resonance research program that includes fellowship training for cardiologists and radiologists as well as some trainees at earlier stages of their careers. Dr. Arai developed interests in myocardial ischemia and infarction during his cardiology fellowship. From initial work characterizing the biochemistry of hibernating myocardium, he has subsequently studied imaging methods capable of assessing ischemic heart disease at high resolution. This emphasis on translational research has led to development and validation of methods for quantifying myocardial perfusion, function, infarction, and most recently post-ischemic myocardial edema. He has taken these methods into a clinical research setting of a community hospital and into epidemiology studies. He has over 125 publications to date and has given over 150 invited lectures, the majority focusing on aspects of cardiovascular magnetic resonance or myocardial ischemia.