Raffi Hagopian
Biography
Raffi Hagopian, M.D., is a Health Sciences Clinical Assistant Professor and Staff Cardiologist at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System and the Department of Cardiology at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree magna cum laude from Ohio State University College of Medicine and completed his cardiovascular disease fellowship at Weill Cornell Medical Center/New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Hagopian is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, Echocardiography, and Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.
Hagopian serves as Principal Investigator of the CARDINAL Project at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System, where he leads a deep learning initiative to predict cardiovascular events from CT images. This work resulted in a publication in NEJM AI in 2024 demonstrating AI-based opportunistic coronary calcium screening at Veterans Affairs hospitals. His research focuses on applying machine learning methods to cardiovascular imaging, including echocardiogram video analysis and CT-based risk prediction models, with collaborations across multiple academic medical centers including Cornell, Cedars-Sinai, and Stanford.
Prior to his clinical cardiology career, Hagopian worked as a Staff Research Associate in Bioinformatics at UCLA's Jake Lusis Atherosclerosis Research Laboratory, where he developed software pipelines for gene-expression analysis and genotype-phenotype associations in cardiovascular disease. He has authored publications in journals including NEJM AI, Critical Care Medicine, Journal of Lipid Research, and PLoS Genetics. Hagopian was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and received the UC Irvine Cardiology Fellowship VA Teacher of the Year Award in 2024.
Return to topEducation
- M.D., Ohio State University, College of Medicine, 2016
- B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering, 2010
Distinctions
- Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society, 2015
- Frank Kraft Prize for Scholastic Achievement, UC Berkeley, 2007
- Landacre Research Honor Society, 2015
- VA Teacher of the Year Award, UC Irvine Cardiology Fellowship, 2024
- Outstanding Academic Scholar Scholarship, OSU College of Medicine, 2013-2014
- Frankel Scholarship, OSU College of Medicine, 2014
- Bennet Research Scholarship, OSU College of Medicine, 2013
- Slagle Merit Scholarship, OSU College of Medicine, 2013
- F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Regional Competition RadioShack Innovation in Control Award, 2006
- F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Regional Competition Finalists, 2004
Areas of Expertise
- Cardiovascular Medicine
- Genotype-Phenotype Associations
- Protein Sequence Alignment
- Metabolic Trait Regulation
- Deep Learning CT Imaging
- Echocardiography Automation Pipelines
- Cardiac Arrest Outcome Prediction
Recent Publications
- Hagopian R, Strebel T, Bernatz S, Myers GA, Offerman E, Zuniga E, Kim CY, Ng AT, Iwaz JA, Singh SP, Carey EP, Kim MJ, Schaefer RS, Yu J, Gentili A, Aerts HJWL, “AI Opportunistic Coronary Calcium Screening at Veterans Affairs Hospitals” (opens in new tab), NEJM AI, 2025.
- Mayampurath A, Hagopian R, Venable L, Carey K, Edelson D, Churpek M, “Comparison of machine learning methods for predicting outcomes after in-hospital cardiac arrest” (opens in new tab), Critical Care Medicine, vol. 50, pp. E162-E172, 2022.
- Mayampurath A, Bashiri F, Hagopian R, Venable L, Carey K, Edelson D, Churpek M, “Predicting neurological outcomes after in-hospital cardiac arrests for patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019” (opens in new tab), Resuscitation, vol. 178, pp. 55-62, 2022.
- Yum B, Adelsheimer A, Tafreshi R, Hagopian R, Kim J, “Clinical Implications of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Radiomics in Cardiac Imaging” (opens in new tab), Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol. 22, no. 11, pp. 1-13, 2020.
- Hagopian R., O'Keefe-Baker V., Aziz Z., Beaser A.D., Nayak H.M., “Malignant atrioventricular nodal reentry tachycardia resulting in cardiac arrest” (opens in new tab), Heartrhythm Case Reports, vol. 5, pp. 173-175, 2019.
- Romay MC, Che N, Becker SN, Pouldar D, Hagopian R, Xiao X, Lusis AJ, Berliner JA, Civelek M, “Regulation of NF-κB signaling by oxidized glycerophospholipid and IL-1β induced miRs-21-3p and -27a-5p in human aortic endothelial cells” (opens in new tab), Journal of Lipid Research, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 38-50, 2015.
- Samorodnitsky E, Datta J, Jewell BM, Hagopian R, Miya J, Wing MR, Damodaran S, Lippus JM, Reeser JW, Bhatt D, Timmers CD, Roychowdhury S, “Comparison of custom capture for targeted next-generation DNA sequencing” (opens in new tab), Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 64-75, 2015.
- Samorodnitsky E, Jewell BM, Hagopian R, Miya J, Wing MR, Lyon E, Damodaran S, Bhatt D, Reeser JW, Datta J, Roychowdhury S, “Evaluation of Hybridization Capture Versus Amplicon-Based Methods for Whole-Exome Sequencing” (opens in new tab), Human Mutation, vol. 36, pp. 903-914, 2015.
- Ghazalpour A, Bennett BJ, Shih D, Che N, Orozco L, Pan C, Hagopian R, He A, Kayne P, Yang WP, Kirchgessner T, Lusis AJ, “Genetic regulation of mouse liver metabolite levels” (opens in new tab), Molecular Systems Biology, vol. 10, pp. 730, 2014.
- Lagarrigue S, Hormozdiari F, Martin LJ, Lecerf F, Hasin Y, Rau C, Hagopian R, Xiao Y, Yan J, Drake TA, Ghazalpour A, Eskin E, Lusis AJ, “Limited RNA editing in exons of mouse liver and adipose” (opens in new tab), Genetics, vol. 193, no. 4, pp. 1107-15, 2013.
- Civelek M, Hagopian R, Pan C, Che N, Yang WP, Kayne PS, Saleem NK, Cederberg H, Kuusisto J, Gargalovic PS, Kirchgessner TG, Laakso M, Lusis AJ, “Genetic regulation of human adipose microRNA expression and its consequences for metabolic traits” (opens in new tab), Human Molecular Genetics, vol. 22, no. 15, pp. 3023-37, 2013.
- Erbilgin A, Civelek M, Romanoski CE, Pan C, Hagopian R, Berliner JA, Lusis AJ, “Identification of CAD candidate genes in GWAS loci and their expression in vascular cells” (opens in new tab), Journal of Lipid Research, vol. 54, no. 7, pp. 1894-905, 2013.
- Ghazalpour A, Bennett B, Petyuk VA, Orozco L, Hagopian R, Mungrue IN, Farber CR, Sinsheimer J, Kang HM, Furlotte N, Park CC, Wen PZ, Brewer H, Weitz K, Camp DG 2nd, Pan C, Yordanova R, Neuhaus I, Tilford C, Siemers N, et al., “Comparative analysis of proteome and transcriptome variation in mouse” (opens in new tab), PLoS Genetics, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. e1001393, 2011.
- Hagopian R, Davidson JR, Datta RS, Samad B, Jarvis GR, Sjölander K, “SATCHMO-JS: a webserver for simultaneous protein multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree construction” (opens in new tab), Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 38, no. Web Server issue, pp. W29-34, 2010.
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Last updated on 3/24/2026.