Cardiac amyloidosis is a serious and progressive infiltrative disease that caused by the deposition of amyloid fibrils at cardiac level. It can be due to rare genetic variants in hereditary forms or as consequence acquired conditions. Thanks advances imaging techniques possibility achieving non-invasive diagnosis, we now know more frequent than traditionally considered. In this position paper W...

BACKGROUND The use of new imaging techniques has contributed significantly to earlier diagnosis and treatment of cardiac tumors. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to analyze data from children with cardiac tumors in terms of clinical presentation, the role of noninvasive diagnostic procedures and the long-term outcome. MATERIAL AND METHODS The data analyzed retrospectively concerned 30 ch...

Significant improvement in survival of children with congenital cardiac malformations has resulted in an increasing population of adolescent and adult patients with congenital heart disease. Of the long-term cardiac problems, ventricular dysfunction remains an important issue of concern. Despite corrective or palliative repair of congenital heart lesions, the right ventricle, which may be the s...

Intravenous contrast agents are clinically useful for objective assessment of left ventricular (LV) regional and global function in patients with sub-optimal echocardiography images. Recent concerns over the safety of second generation microbubble contrast agents have now been largely abated with the emergence of robust clinical data supporting its safety and clinical utility. With proper techn...

In recent years, murine models have become the primary avenue for studying the molecular mechanisms of cardiac dysfunction resulting from changes in gene expression. Transgenic and gene targeting methods can be used to generate mice with altered cardiac size and function, and as a result, in vivo techniques are needed to evaluate their cardiac phenotype. Transthoracic echocardiography, pulse wa...

case presentation we present a case with a typical picture of myocarditis but normal echocardiographic findings, the diagnosis of which was confirmed by cardiac mri. discussion in particular, cardiac mri data are useful in borderline cases or in the presence of discrepancy between clinical picture and echocardiographic results. introduction the diagnosis of myocarditis based on a spectrum of fi...

Non-invasive cardiovascular imaging initially focused on heart structures, allowing the visualization of their motion and inferring its functional status from it. Colour-Doppler and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) have allowed a visual approach to intracardiac flow behaviour, as well as measuring its velocity at single selected spots. Recently, the application of new technologies to medical us...

Primary cardiac tumors are rare. Myxoma and sarcoma are the most common types of benign and malignant cardiac tumors, respectively. Secondary cardiac tumors, the majority of which are metastases, are more common than primary tumors. The use of an appropriate combination of cardiovascular imaging techniques is necessary for the differential diagnosis of cardiac tumors and for preoperative examin...

We present a fiber-optic low-coherence imaging technique, termed spectral-domain differential interference contrast microscopy (SD-DIC), for quantitative DIC imaging of both reflective surfaces and transparent biological specimens. SD-DIC combines the common-path nature of a Nomarski DIC interferometer with the high sensitivity of spectral-domain low-coherence interferometry to obtain high-reso...