Real World Indications for Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging: When is it Invaluable in Clinical Practice?

Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) is a highly versatile non invasive and nonionizing method for accurately evaluaring function, structure. perfusion and tissue characteristics in a large variety of cardiac diseases. Due to its intrinsic flexibility, CMR represents an imaging modality that allow for the assessment of multiple different parameters within one examination. In particular, it can depict cardiovascular structure and anatomy, characterize tissue composition (including myocardial viability, inflammation and necrosis), measure cardiac function in terms of global and regional wall motion of the left and right ventricle or blood flow, assess metabolism with spectroscopic techniques, visualize and quantify myocardial perfusion and define the anatomy of epicardial coronary arteries.