Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction Large efforts have been made in the last decade to resolve gender inequality across cardiology faculty, trial participation, research publications and journal editorial boards. However, we were unaware of specific data examining female representation in cardiovascular imaging and its subspecialties among organisations associated with the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI). Purpose To characterise the representation of women in cardiovascular imaging sub-specialties within EACVI and affiliated national cardiac imaging organisations. Methods We scraped publicly available name data from over 100 online sources from EACVI and its affiliated national societies, including EACVI or national accreditation records for cardiac imaging. We recorded data on the date of appointment/accreditation and sub-specialism, when available. We delineated sub-specialisms into congenital heart disease/paediatrics (CHD/P), echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR), computed tomography (CCT) or nuclear medicine (CNM). We defined gender in a binary manner as either male or female. We used the previously validated artificial intelligence (AI) system Namsor® to assign gender based on name morphology and geolocation data. We pre-set a confidence of gender-name matching of 95%. Results The AI was able to assign gender at 95% confidence to 12,643/13,436 (94.1%) available names. We could identify any sub-specialism in 10,840/12643 (85.7%) of names with a gender assignment. The proportion of names assigned female gender differed between sub-specialties: CHD/P 364/621 (58.6%), echocardiography 4475/8563 (52.3%), CMR 450/1071 (42.0%), CCT 92/246 (37.4%) and CNM 123/339 (36.3%) (χ2 101.8 [p<0.0001]) (Figure 1). The proportion of women varied over time, within each specialty. For example, among the 3 largest sub-specialities since 2010, the proportion of women has increased in CMR, declined in congenital/paediatric imaging and remained similar in echocardiography (Figure 2). Conclusion(s) Despite the development of multimodality imaging, echocardiography dominates among publicly named individuals associated with EACVI. Here and within CHD/P women are well-represented. This study has significant limitations due to AI-based gender assignments into binary categories based on name and location data. However, broadly, it may identify areas to which equity-based interventions may be most effective such as increasing representation in cardiac CT, MRI and NM.
Authors: M Berrill, C Santos, A Baltabaeva
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4406958657