BACKGROUND A comprehensive evaluation of myocardial ischemia requires measures of both oxygen supply and demand. Positron emission tomography (PET) is currently the gold standard for such evaluations, but its use is limited because of its ionizing radiation, limited availability, and high cost. A cardiac MRI method was developed for assessing myocardial oxygenation. The purpose of this study wa...

Cardiovascular diseases are a major health concern world-wide. Analysis of the cardiac motion is a standard technique for studying and understanding the etiology of heart disease such as ischemic heart disease. Ultrasound imaging is a very important and competitive medical diagnostic tool, due to its low cost, short acquisition time, and non-invasive nature. Echocardiography is a widely used ul...

The year 2013 marked the 60th anniversary of Inge Edler and Hellmuth Hertz's discovery of echocardiography and the 160th anniversary of the death of Christian Andreas Doppler (1803–1853). The work of these pioneers marked modern cardiology not only by providing a more accurate diagnosis of heart disease but also by guiding patients' management. Echocardiography has to be included among the top ...

Dynamic changes in cardiac structure and function are usually examined by real-time imaging techniques such as angiography or echocardiography. MRI has many advantages compared with these established cardiac imaging modalities. However, system hardware and software limitations have limited cardiac MRI to gated acquisitions that are lengthy and often result in failed acquisitions and examination...

Background SMART1Map is a new single-point technique for cardiac T1 mapping [1]. Unlike Look-Locker approaches, such as MOLLI, which yield an “apparent” T1 (T1*), SMART1Map directly measures true T1. Because T1* is a function of imaging parameters, it is always shorter than T1, and correction methods are required to obtain the true T1. This work compared the accuracy of SMART1Map with MOLLI in ...

Background Global myocardial edema, a surrogate measure of myocardial inflammation, has been reported in patients with chronic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) based on T2weighted STIR imaging. However, STIR imaging is prone to motion artefact and issues related to cardiac cycle timing and coil sensitivity. We hypothesised that a novel quantitative CMR T2 mapping technique would provide a reliable ...

Carcinoid heart disease is a rare cause of right-sided valvular dysfunction, primarily mediated by serotonin. It is an important complication in patients with carcinoid syndrome and occurs in 20-50% of such patients. Echocardiography is the main technique used for the assessment of carcinoid heart disease, but other imaging modalities are also important, particularly in the quantification of th...

Background CMR is the preeminent imaging technique to assess LV function and myocardial injury. With the advent of combined angiography / CMR suites, there is an opportunity to perform combined invasive hemodynamic evaluation and treatments further informed by CMR imaging. However, key considerations are safety issues in potentially unstable patients in the context of MR and X-ray hazards. Here...