Current and Future Applications of Magnetic Resonance in Cardiovascular Disease

This timely monograph focuses exclusively on the current and emerging use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy (MRS) as clinical diagnostic and scientific investigative tools in cardiovascular disease.

While MRI is now primarily being used to depict morphology, the innate benefit of this modality is unparalleled precision in the quantification of cardiac function and blood flow. This potential is intriguingly explored in a number of chapters that describe the utilization of MR techniques for myocardial tagging, myocardial perfusion, and coronary flow quantification. The continuous development of MRS as a realistic probe for in vivo elucidation of myocardial metabolism, myocardial oxidation mechanisms, and myocardial viability is also detailed.

Magnetic resonance angiography has now evolved into an impressive imaging modality for several regions of the circulation, and the contributors provide lucid and in-depth profiles of them all. Readers will learn the optimal techniques and applications in the thoracic and abdominal aorta, carotid, lower limb, and coronary arteries -- as well as some of the insights into cardiovascular physiology, pharmacology, and metabolism that MRI/MRS-assisted research has discovered.

This book provides a lucid, comprehensive, and expert overview of an increasingly important modality in detecting and understanding cardiovascular disease.