A GPS map for pulmonary hypertension: a review of imaging modalities

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a lethal disease with a prevalence of 10-20 % in the general population. The current gold standard diagnosis approach is right heart catheterization, directly detecting pulmonary artery pressure. Imaging for PH patients plays an important role in the etiological diagnosis and evaluation of right heart (RV) function, which is a key determinant of morbidity and mortality in PH patients. Currently, echocardiography is the first-line imaging modality for screening PH and evaluating RV function. CMRI is the gold standard method to evaluate RV function. MDCT, radionuclide ventriculography and pulmonary angiography are mostly used in the differential diagnosis of the cause of PH. In this review article, we also mention several newly studied imaging modalities, such as three-dimensional echocardiography, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT), which showed promise for early diagnosis of PH.