What Does Cardiac MRI Show?
The doctor supervising your scan will provide your
doctor with the results of your cardiac MRI. Your doctor will discuss the
findings with you.
Cardiac MRI can reveal various heart conditions and
disorders, such as:
Cardiac MRI is a fast, accurate tool that can help
diagnose a heart attack by detecting areas of the heart that dont move
normally, have poor blood supply, or are scarred. Cardiac MRI can show whether
any of the coronary arteries are blocked, causing reduced blood flow to your
heart muscle.
Currently, coronary angiography is the procedure
most commonly used to look at blockages in the coronary arteries. Coronary
angiography is an invasive procedure that uses x rays and iodine-based contrast
dye. Researchers have found that cardiac MRI can replace coronary angiography
in some cases, avoiding the need to use x-ray radiation and iodine-based
dyes.
Cardiac MRI
Figure A shows the hearts
position in the body and the location and angle of the MRI images shown in
figure C. Figure B is a MRI angiogram, which is sometimes used instead of a
standard angiogram. Figure C shows MRI pictures of a normal left ventricle
(left image), a left ventricle damaged from a heart attack (middle image), and
a left ventricle that isnt getting enough blood from the coronary
arteries (right image).
Researchers are discovering new ways to use cardiac
MRI. In the future, cardiac MRI may be able to replace x rays as the main way
to guide invasive procedures such as
cardiac
catheterization (KATH-e-ter-i-ZA-shun). Also, improvements in cardiac MRI
are likely to lead to better methods for detecting heart disease in the
future. |