Mike Fackelmann had no reason to think he had heart disease. Although his cholesterol was a touch on the high side, he had never experienced any chest pains and had just passed a stress test with flying colors. So last November, when a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Hospital asked the then 49-year-old registered nurse to help demonstrate an experimental new cardiac scanner, neither the physician nor Fackelmann expected to see anything out of the ordinary. The idea was simply to slide Fackelmann through the machine and show what finely detailed images of the heart it could produce.
The favor...