This open access book presents a comprehensive overview of dilated cardiomyopathy, providing readers with practical guidelines for its clinical management. The first part of the book analyzes in detail the disease’s pathophysiology, its diagnostic work up as well as the prognostic stratification, and illustrates the role of genetics and gene-environment interaction. The second part presents current and future treatment options, highlighting the importance of long-term and individualized treatments and follow-up. Furthermore, it discusses open issues, such as the apparent healing phenomenon, the early prognosis of arrhythmic events or the use of genetic testing in clinical practice. Offering a multidisciplinary approach for optimizing the clinical management of DCM, this book is an invaluable aid not only for the clinical cardiologists, but for all physicians involved in the care of this challenging disease.

This highly comprehensive and informed textbook has been prepared by the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance section of the European Society of Cardiology association on imaging, the EACVI. The EACVI Textbook of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance is the authority on the subject. The textbook is aligned with ESC Core Curriculum and EACVI Core Syllabus for CMR. It is a practical resource and provides a disease orientated outlook on the subject. Structured with thirteen clear and detailed sections, ranging from Physics to Methodology, and featuring specific sections on ischemic heart disease, myocardial disease, pericardial disease, and congenital heart disease and adult congenital heart disease, The EACVI Textbook of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance provides extensive knowledge across the entire subject area in CMR. Beautifully illustrated and physical principles enriched with schematic animations, the textbook is advanced further with key video content based on clinical cases. Written by leading experts in the field from across the world, the textbook aims to summarise the existing research and clinical evidence for the various CMR indications and provide an invaluable resource for cardiologists and radiologists across the board. The textbook is ideal for cardiologists and radiologists new to the field of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, those preparing for ESC certification in CMR, and those established in the field wishing to gain a deep understanding of CMR. Online access to the digital version is included with purchase of the print book, with accompanying videos referenced within the text available on Oxford Medicine Online.

The first book to cover the groundbreaking development and clinical applications of Magnetic Resonance Elastography, this book is essential for all practitioners interested in this revolutionary diagnostic modality. The book is divided into three sections. The first covers the history of MRE. The second covers technique and clinical applications of MRE in the liver with respect to fibrosis, liver masses, and other diseases. Case descriptions are presented to give the reader a hands-on approach. The final section presents the techniques, sequence and preliminary results of applications in other areas of the body including muscle, brain, lung, heart, and breast.

This open access book focuses on diagnostic and interventional imaging of the chest, breast, heart, and vessels. It consists of a remarkable collection of contributions authored by internationally respected experts, featuring the most recent diagnostic developments and technological advances with a highly didactical approach. The chapters are disease-oriented and cover all the relevant imaging modalities, including standard radiography, CT, nuclear medicine with PET, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as imaging-guided interventions. As such, it presents a comprehensive review of current knowledge on imaging of the heart and chest, as well as thoracic interventions and a selection of "hot topics". The book is intended for radiologists, however, it is also of interest to clinicians in oncology, cardiology, and pulmonology.

In cardiovascular disease, which is the most common cause of death in the world, early diagnosis is crucial for disease outcome. Diagnosis of cardiovascular disease can be challenging, though. Quantification of myocardial T1 and T2 relaxation times with MRI has demonstrated to be a promising method for characterizing myocardial tissue, but long measurement times have hampered clinical use. The overall aim of this doctoral thesis was to develop, validate and, in patient studies, evaluate a very fast three-dimensional method for simultaneous quantification of myocardial T1 and T2 relaxation times with whole coverage of the left ventricle. The 3D-QALAS method is presented in Paper I of this thesis. It is a method that simultaneous measures both T1 and T2 relaxation times in a three-dimensional volume of the heart. The method requires 15 heartbeats, to produce 13 short-axis slices of the left ventricle with voxelwise information of both T1 and T2 relaxation times. The 3D-QALAS method was validated in phantoms and in 10 healthy volunteers by comparing the method with reference methods and demonstrated good accuracy and robustness both in-vitro and in-vivo. In Paper II, the 3D-QALAS method was carefully validated in-vivo by investigating accuracy and precision in 10 healthy volunteers, while the clinical feasibility of the method was investigated in 23 patients with various cardiac pathologies. Repeated independent and dependent scans together with the intra-scan repeatability, demonstrated all a very good precision for the 3D-QALAS method in healthy volunteers. In Paper III and IV, the 3D-QALAS method was applied and evaluated in patient cohorts where the heart muscle alters over time. In Paper III, patients with severe aortic stenosis underwent MRI examinations with 3D-QALAS before, 3 months after and 12 months after aortic valve surgery. Changes in T1 and T2 were observed, which might be used as markers of myocardial changes with respect to edema and fibrosis, which may develop due to increased workload over a long period of time. In study IV, 3D-QALAS was used to investigate 10 breast cancer patients treated with radiation therapy prior to treatment, 2-3 weeks into treatment, and one and 6 months after completion of treatment, to investigate any changes in T1 and T2 and further if they can be correlated to unwanted irradiation of the heart during radiation therapy.

- Provides state-of-the-art coverage of CMR technologies and guidelines, including basic principles, imaging techniques, ischemic heart disease, right ventricular and congenital heart disease, vascular and pericardium conditions, and functional cardiovascular disease. - Includes new chapters on non-cardiac pathology, pacemaker safety, economics of CMR, and guidelines as well as new coverage of myocarditis and its diagnosis and assessment of prognosis by cardiovascular magnetic resonance, and the use of PET/CMR imaging of the heart, especially in sarcoidosis. - Features more than 1,100 high-quality images representing today's CMR imaging. - Covers T1, T2 and ECV mapping, as well as T2* imaging in iron overload, which has been shown to save lives in patients with thalassaemia major - Discusses the cost-effectiveness of CMR. - Provides state-of-the-art coverage of CMR technologies and guidelines, including basic principles, imaging techniques, ischemic heart disease, right ventricular and congenital heart disease, vascular and pericardium conditions, and functional cardiovascular disease. - Includes new chapters on non-cardiac pathology, pacemaker safety, economics of CMR, and guidelines as well as new coverage of myocarditis and its diagnosis and assessment of prognosis by cardiovascular magnetic resonance, and the use of PET/CMR imaging of the heart, especially in sarcoidosis. - Features more than 1,100 high-quality images representing today's CMR imaging. - Covers T1, T2 and ECV mapping, as well as T2* imaging in iron overload, which has been shown to save lives in patients with thalassaemia major. - Discusses the cost-effectiveness of CMR. - Expert ConsultTM eBook version included with purchase. This enhanced eBook experience allows you to search all of the text, figures, and references from the book on a variety of devices.

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a 'go-to' reference for methods and applications of quantitative magnetic resonance imaging, with specific sections on Relaxometry, Perfusion, and Diffusion. Each section will start with an explanation of the basic techniques for mapping the tissue property in question, including a description of the challenges that arise when using these basic approaches. For properties which can be measured in multiple ways, each of these basic methods will be described in separate chapters. Following the basics, a chapter in each section presents more advanced and recently proposed techniques for quantitative tissue property mapping, with a concluding chapter on clinical applications. The reader will learn: - The basic physics behind tissue property mapping - How to implement basic pulse sequences for the quantitative measurement of tissue properties - The strengths and limitations to the basic and more rapid methods for mapping the magnetic relaxation properties T1, T2, and T2* - The pros and cons for different approaches to mapping perfusion - The methods of Diffusion-weighted imaging and how this approach can be used to generate diffusion tensor - maps and more complex representations of diffusion - How flow, magneto-electric tissue property, fat fraction, exchange, elastography, and temperature mapping are performed - How fast imaging approaches including parallel imaging, compressed sensing, and Magnetic Resonance - Fingerprinting can be used to accelerate or improve tissue property mapping schemes - How tissue property mapping is used clinically in different organs - Structured to cater for MRI researchers and graduate students with a wide variety of backgrounds - Explains basic methods for quantitatively measuring tissue properties with MRI - including T1, T2, perfusion, diffusion, fat and iron fraction, elastography, flow, susceptibility - enabling the implementation of pulse sequences to perform measurements - Shows the limitations of the techniques and explains the challenges to the clinical adoption of these traditional methods, presenting the latest research in rapid quantitative imaging which has the possibility to tackle these challenges - Each section contains a chapter explaining the basics of novel ideas for quantitative mapping, such as compressed sensing and Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting-based approaches