Understanding Cardiac Imaging Techniques (Nato: Life and Behavioural Sciences, 332)

The availability of 3D imaging in cardiology has provided a large flow of information to the clinical management of low and high risk patients. However, the correlation among different findings such as perfusion, metabolism or wall motion abnormalities is difficult and mostly qualitative. In fact labs may return information that is frequently redundant or even conflicting due to lack of correlation between different techniques in imaging. The complexity of the problem is can be reflected in the technical differences of the many imaging techniques, for example, echocardiography is based on ultrasound while angiography is based on x-rays. This text collects the experiences of different specialists, starting from the basic concepts of cardiac imaging, analyzing differences and similarities between invasive and non-invasive techniques, challenged versus the "computer" point of view, in order to obtain an operative efficient guide in the field of image fusion.