Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of the cardiovascular system

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging provides a noninvasive method of detecting and characterizing several clinically important cardiac diseases. These include hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, several congenital disorders, especially those with abnormalities of the surrounding great vessels and those with surgical shunts in place, intra and extra cardiac masses and constrictive pericarditis. NMR imaging is becoming useful in the visualization of aortic disease, particular for the serial management of coarctation, and for the diagnosis of thoracic and abdominal aneurysms and dissections. Other peripheral vascular lesions such as portal shunts and arterial-venous malformations are detected. With further experience and improved technology, NMR imaging will become a valuable tool for the detection and characterization of recent infarction, monitoring of cardiac transplantation patients for the presence of rejection, detection of myocardial iron overload and the visualization of peripheral vascular disease. For NMR imaging to become firmly entrenched as a cardiovascular imaging tool, however, it will be necessary to carefully document its advantage over already well established and less expensive methods, such as radionuclide imaging techniques and 2-D echocardiography. Moreover, NMR imaging will need to be compared to developing technology like cine computerized X-ray tomography before the best noninvasive imaging technique is finally established for a particular cardiovascular disease.