The era of personalized medicine emphasizes the provision health care guided by cardiomyopathy phenotypes described, their interpretation based on genotype, and genetic counseling. identification high-risk subtypes diagnosis rare etiologies with potential therapies cannot be neglected. Genetic sequencing these patients, in addition to advances cardiac imaging techniques, has indicated a new per...

Fetal cardiac function is increasingly recognized as a marker of disease severity and prognosis in selected fetal conditions. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used in experimental (animal) fetal cardiology but the lack of a noninvasive fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) to trigger image acquisition remains a major limiting factor precluding its application in humans. Fetal medicine speciali...

Cardiac function is about creating and sustaining blood in motion. This is achieved through a proper sequence of myocardial deformation whose final goal is that of creating flow. Deformation imaging provided valuable contributions to understanding cardiac mechanics; more recently, several studies evidenced the existence of an intimate relationship between cardiac function and intra-ventricular ...

Originally developed for increased scanning velocity in cardiac imaging, parallel imaging (PI) techniques have recently also been applied for the reduction of artifacts in single-shot techniques. In functional brain imaging (fMRI) techniques, PI has been used for several purposes. It has been applied to reduce the distortions caused by the length of the echo-planar imaging readout, diminution o...

Psychophysiological studies and MRI neuro-imaging findings provide evidence that heart rate variability (HRV) which is in control of our emotions affects our brain cognitive centers. It has been shown that coherent heart-brain interaction can change the pattern of the afferent cardiac input that is sent to the brain. For this purpose, the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) has proposed a kind of biof...

As a nuclear approach, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a functional imaging technique which is based on the detection of gamma ray pairs emitted by a positron-emitting radionuclide. There are certain limitations to this technique such as normal tissue uptake. Therefore, it has been recommended that patients prepare before scanning. Fasting for a short while before PET imaging is an exampl...

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Background Techniques for the evaluation of regionaland global left-ventricular strain parameters are emerging in cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. Some of these techniques require dedicated CMR sequences at the time of the imaging examination, others are based on post-processing of routine imaging. Little is known about normal values and range of these parameters, assessed by CMR. More...

Delayed enhancement magnetic resonance imaging (DE-MRI) has excellent spatial resolution and compared with other cardiac imaging techniques it can detect a small myocardial infarction (MI) or a subendocardial infarction. A 76-year-old man was admitted for loss of consciousness because of cardiac tamponade. The cause of tamponade was unknown, but electrocardiography and blood test suggested a re...