Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Fellow

Ruben Mora, MD

I study how cardiac CT can predict — and prevent — cardiovascular events. My work at the Budoff Lab, Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA spans coronary artery calcium, quantitative CCTA plaque and perivascular fat biomarkers, and machine-learning methods that make those measurements automatic and scalable.

  • The Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center · Torrance, CA
  • Assistant Professor, Southern California University of Health Sciences

Publications Curriculum vitae (PDF)

Research

Four connected threads, all pointed at the same question: who is actually at risk, and how early can imaging tell us?

Cardiac CT & coronary artery calcium

CAC-based risk stratification, the diabetes–CAC risk-equivalence question, how CAC has moved through ACC/AHA prevention guidelines from 2007 onward, CCTA in acute chest pain, and the "warranty period" of a normal coronary CT angiogram.

Quantitative CCTA biomarkers

Total plaque burden and high-risk plaque features, pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation, epicardial adipose tissue, and the automated segmentation needed to measure them reproducibly at cohort scale.

Cardio-oncology

Cardiotoxicity from immune checkpoint inhibitors and tyrosine kinase inhibitors — the imaging findings that precede events, and risk-prediction algorithms built on them.

AI & clinical decision support

Deep-learning pericardium and epicardial fat segmentation, benchmarking architectures for non-contrast CT, ECG-AI approaches correlated against imaging-defined atherosclerosis, and LLM pipelines that structure unstructured cardiac imaging reports.

Cohorts and trials

MESASTOPEKSTROMNATURE-CTKETO-CTAT-PLAQMiHeartInstitutional CCTA registries

Publications

Peer-reviewed

  1. Emerging quantitative CCTA imaging biomarkers for cardiovascular risk stratification: a narrative review

    Mora R, Irannejad K, Abbas N, Mogga P, Iskander B, Hubbard L, Roy S, Lakshmanan S, Budoff M, Krishnan S.

    Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine. 2026;13:1850945. doi

  2. Coronary CT angiography for acute chest pain in the emergency department: a systematic review of clinical utility

    Irannejad K, Hubbard L, Narashim A, Mora R, Iskander B, Punnanithinont N, Ichikawa K, Kinninger A, Lakshmanan S, Roy S, Chang D, Budoff M, Krishnan S.

    Emergency Care and Medicine. 2025.

  3. Quantitative comparison of coronary artery calcium and AI-based plaque burden: agreement, discordance, and clinical implications

    Irannejad K, Mora R, Mogga B, Iskander B, Punnanithinont N, Kinninger A, Krishnan S, Lakshmanan S, Roy S, Budoff M.

    Research Square (preprint). 2026. doi

  4. Adverse cardiovascular events and cardiac imaging findings in patients on immune checkpoint inhibitors

    Kwan JM, Shen M, Akhlaghi N, Hu JR, Chen NW, Mora R, Cross JL, Jiang M, Mankbadi M, Wang P, et al.

    PLoS One. 2024;19(12):e0314555. doi

  5. Cryptococcal meningitis in an apparent immunocompetent host

    Perozo MA, Mora R, Stratidis J, Freites N.

    Cureus. 2023;15(8):e43121. doi

  6. Removal of ligand-bound liposomes from cell surfaces by microbubbles exposed to ultrasound

    Ibsen S, Mora R, Shi G, Schutt C, Cui W, Benchimol M, Serra V, Esener S.

    Journal of Biological Physics. 2017;43(4):493–510. doi

  7. Spinal cord stimulator implant infection rates and risk factors: a multicenter retrospective study

    Hoelzer BC, Bendel MA, Deer TR, Eldrige JS, Walega DR, Wang Z, et al. (incl. Mora R).

    Neuromodulation. 2017;20(6):558–562. doi · PMID 28493699

  8. Characterization and optimization of mTHPP nanoparticles for photodynamic therapy of head and neck cancer

    Ding H, Mora R, Gao J, Sumer BD.

    Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. 2011;145(4):612–617. doi

Book chapter

  1. Assessment of cardiovascular calcium: interpretation, prognostic value, and relationship to lipids and other cardiovascular risk factors

    Mora R, Irannejad K, Budoff M.

    In: Cardiac CT Imaging: Diagnosis of Cardiovascular Disease. Springer; 2025.

Under review

  1. Semaglutide reduces left ventricular mass independent of metabolic changes in patients with type 2 diabetes: a STOP Trial substudy

    Mora R, Kwaah PA, Irannejad K, Manubolu VS, Ichikawa K, Kinninger A, Lakshmanan S, Budoff MJ.

    Submitted — Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.

  2. Coronary calcium risk equivalence in type 2 diabetes: the MESA Study

    Mora R, Kwaah PA, Irannejad K, Ichikawa K, Arora K, Bancks M, Budoff M.

    Submitted — JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging.

  3. Coronary artery calcium in ACC/AHA prevention guidelines: evolution from 2007 to 2026

    Irannejad K, Mora R, Krishnan S, Lakshmanan S, Roy S, Budoff M.

    Submitted — JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging.

Abstracts & conference proceedings (17)
  1. Mora R, et al. Prevalence of right coronary artery anomalies: a 20-year study using coronary CT angiography. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  2. Mora R, et al. Pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation in individuals with ketogenic diet–associated LDL-C elevations. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  3. Mora R, et al. Natural history of pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation in coronary atherosclerosis by serial CCTA. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  4. Mora R, et al. Association between Social Deprivation Index and coronary artery calcium in Los Angeles County. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  5. Mora R, et al. Warranty period of a normal coronary CT angiography: estimating time to CAD progression by risk factor profile. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  6. Mora R, et al. Systematic benchmarking of 21 deep learning architectures for automated pericardium segmentation on non-contrast CT. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  7. Mora R, et al. Deep-learning epicardial adipose tissue assessment with computed tomography. SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting; July 2026.
  8. Mora R, et al. The effect of colchicine on pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation by serial coronary CT angiography: insights from the EKSTROM Trial. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2026;87(12 Suppl):26-A-17775-ACC.
  9. Mora R, et al. Age- and sex-specific trajectories of coronary plaque progression: a 10-year female delay by quantitative CCTA. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2026;87(12 Suppl):26-A-18801-ACC.
  10. Mora R, et al. LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular risk across obesity and metabolic syndrome phenotypes: insights from MESA. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2026;87(12 Suppl):26-A-20727-ACC.
  11. Kim NY, Mora R, Kinninger A, Budoff M. A secondary analysis of the effect of colchicine on cardiac chamber size in patients with stable coronary artery disease compared to placebo (EKSTROM). Metabolism. 2026;177:156533.
  12. Wright C, Cross J, Wahi S, Daggula K, Im Y, Mora R, Liu Y, Kwan J. Predicting adverse cardiovascular events in patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors. Circulation. 2025;152(Suppl 3):Abstract 4358022.
  13. Wahi S, Cross J, Mora R, Im Y, Kwan J. A novel machine learning–based adverse cardiovascular events risk algorithm for cancer patients treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Circulation. 2025;152(Suppl 3):Abstract 4364966.
  14. Kwaah PA, Mora R, Matute Martinez CF, Diaz Saravia S, Chitsazan M, Li S, Sawano M, et al. Transforming cardio-oncologic care: enhancing physician knowledge through a mobile app–based pilot study. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2025;85(12 Suppl).
  15. Mora R, Pinkhasova PR, Gupta M, Samarasinghe L, Bond MP. Catastrophic complications of ventricular septal aneurysms. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2024;83(13 Suppl).
  16. Walgamage T, Walgamage M, Mora R, Ahmed-Khan M, Jimenez D, Tickoo S, De Luna D. A twist in the treatment of NSCLC: a novel case of QTc prolongation in pralsetinib. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2024;83(13 Suppl).
  17. Mora R, Iyer D, Bozdemir E, Um HB, Chichra A, Homer R, Kwan J. Cardiogenic shock and myocardial infarction in a young patient with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2024;83(13 Suppl).

Selected presentations

  1. Semaglutide therapy and reduction of left ventricular mass in patients with type 2 diabetes: a STOP Trial substudy

    SCCT Young Investigator Award Presentations · June 2025 · Award finalist

  2. Effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists on structural heart parameters: post hoc analysis of the STOP Trial

    SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting · July 2025 · Montreal, QC

  3. Effects of education on cardiovascular health: insights from the MiHeart cohort

    SCCT Annual Scientific Meeting · July 2025 · Montreal, QC

  4. Transforming cardio-oncologic care: enhancing physician knowledge through a mobile app–based pilot study

    ACC Annual Scientific Session · March 2025 · Atlanta, GA · Moderated poster

  5. Catastrophic complications of ventricular septal aneurysms

    ACC Annual Scientific Session · 2024 · Atlanta, GA

  6. Accelerated extraction of cardiac MRI parameters using open-source clinical large language models

    AI in Medicine Symposium, Yale School of Medicine · 2024 · New Haven, CT

About

I'm a physician-researcher training in advanced cardiovascular imaging at the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA, where I work in Dr. Matthew Budoff's lab. My research uses cardiac CT to sharpen cardiovascular risk prediction — from established coronary artery calcium scoring to newer quantitative markers like pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation and AI-derived plaque burden.

Alongside the imaging work, I build the computational tooling it depends on: deep-learning segmentation pipelines for epicardial fat and pericardium, and language-model workflows that pull structured measurements out of free-text imaging reports so cohort-scale analysis is actually tractable. I also collaborate with the Kwan Lab at Yale on cardio-oncology risk prediction for patients receiving checkpoint inhibitors and tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

I completed medical school at UC San Diego, internal medicine residency through the Yale New Haven Hospital affiliate in Danbury, and served as chief resident at Huntington Health, a Cedars-Sinai affiliate. I'm board certified in internal medicine and teach on Dr. Budoff's CCTA course.

Training

  • 2025– Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Fellow, Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA
  • 2024–25 Chief Resident, Internal Medicine, Huntington Health / Cedars-Sinai affiliate
  • 2022–24 Internal Medicine Residency, CIFC / Yale New Haven Hospital affiliate
  • 2016–17 Internship, Internal Medicine, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center
  • 2012–16 MD, UC San Diego School of Medicine
  • 2007–11 BS Human Biology, UC San Diego

Honors

  • SCCT Young Investigator Award Finalist (2025)
  • Patricia A. Tietjen, MD Teaching Academy Scholar (2023–24)
  • NIH Medical Research Scholar (2013)
  • Maximizing Access to Research Careers Scholar, UCSD (2009–11)

Societies

  • Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography
  • American College of Cardiology
  • American College of Physicians
  • National Hispanic Medical Association

Contact

Open to collaboration on cardiac CT cohorts, quantitative imaging biomarkers, and applied ML in cardiovascular imaging.

RubenMoraMD@gmail.com Download CV