MRI Cardiac Imaging

MRI cardiac imaging can lead to better technologists and better imaging through understanding of the difficulties requiring the technicalities of catching a moving pathology.

MRI cardiac imaging requires a series of steps to get to the area of interest requested by the radiologist and referring physician.  The exam can be streamlined to specifics for finding answers to the exact information requested.

Whether it is a portion of the cardiac function, pulmonary valve function, aortic valve regurgitation (leaking), QP-QS (quantitative pulmonary flow ratio to quantitative systolic flow), flow quantification of a particular valve, or tissue characterization through other means, cardiac MRI is an exciting use of the MRI tool.  Techniques that create success are taught through practice, and repetition.  We can help teach your MRI team to be proficient at MRI cardiac imaging.

Whether the focus is to look for right heart disease, pulmonary disease, mitral valve regurgitation or Tetrology of Fallot, we can help your staff find the answers through cardiac MRI imaging. Each one of these requires a specific series of steps to get to the helpful diagnosis of each cardiac condition.  Catching a moving beating heart is not typical for MRI imaging. In most cases, the technologist has to encourage the patient to hold very still, and hold their breaths. In the case of MRI cardiac imaging, holding still is important, as well as holding the breath, but catching the heart while it’s moving is required in order to get cinematic cardiac imaging.

 MRI Cardiac Imaging

MRI cardiac imaging made a huge leap in popularity and success when the United Kingdom scientific report was released in December of 2011, stating that MRI was a better diagnosing tool than nuclear medicine spect testing. The link to the original report is just below.

 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961335-4/abstract

We were early members of the SCMR (Society of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance) and have been the first to help introduce cardiac MRI imaging to many radiology centers at many states.