Current state of the art cardiovascular MR imaging techniques for assessment of ischemic heart disease

Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is increasingly being used to evaluate patients with known or suspected ischemic heart disease, because of its ability to acquire images in any orientation and the wide variety of sequences available to characterize normal and abnormal structure and function. Substantial improvements have been made in the hardware and software used to perform CMR, resulting in better and more consistent image quality. There has been a greater emphasis recently in developing and validating quantitative CMR techniques. This article reviews advances in CMR techniques for assessing cardiac function, myocardial perfusion, late gadolinium enhancement, and tissue characterization with T1 and T2 mapping sequences.