[Progress of clinical diagnosis of heart failure]

The role of CT and MRI in the diagnosis of heart failure include evaluation of cardiac function and pathological diagnosis. Recently, both CT and MRI have achieved a marked progress in the time dissolution function. As a result, ultrafast CT and gradient field echo (FE) MRI are now available for evaluation of cardiac function. However, the former is yet to become popular because of its extremely high cost. On the other hand, various methods have been devised for blood flow measurement, which is also possible by MRI. CT and MRI provide useful information for detecting the cause of heart failure. With CT, diagnosis of calcification of pericardium, valves, aorta and coronary artery, that of pericardial effusion retention, congenital heart and great vessel disease, intracardiac tumor and thrombosis, as well as, morphological diagnosis of dissecting aneurysm of aorta are possible. Helical CT provides highly continuous three dimensional information. MRI is also available for morphological diagnosis of congenital heart diseases while it is possible to detect valvular regurgitation and shunt flow with FE method. There is a possibility of elucidating the energy metabolism of phosphoric acid by MR spectroscopy. CT and MRI is considered more useful in the pathological diagnosis of heart failure rather than in the evaluation of cardiac function. Further progress in these fields is expected in the future.