Cristina Pislaru was born in Bucharest, Romania. She received the M.D. degree in General Medicine from the University of Medicine Carol Davila, Bucharest, Romania, in 1992. After graduation, she completed one and a half years of internal medicine at St. Pantelimon University Hospital, Bucharest. In 1994 she entered the research field and went, as a research fellow, to the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven), Belgium, until 1999. Currently, she is Research Assistant in the Ultrasound Research Laboratory, Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Assistant Professor of Biophysics, Mayo Foundation.

Her main research interests include:

- Cardiac mechanics and myocardial viability studied by tissue Doppler imaging and strain rate imaging

- Assessment of the myocardial stiffness and stress-strain relationship using 2 new ultrasound methods, ie, Strain Echocardiography and Vibro-acoustography, in both normal and diseased myocardium

- Noninvasive assessment of arterial calcifications using vibro-acoustography

- Diagnostic and therapeutic use of contrast echocardiography

- Intracardiac echocardiography

- Ultrasound tissue characterization using raw radiofrequency data in assessment of myocardial status