Cardiac MR and CT: Prime focus for correlative imaging

Abstract

Cardiac disease is recognized as a major worldwide health problem with significant morbidity and mortality. Early diagnosis and treatment coupled with aggressive preventive measures are essential for positive outcomes. Rapid technological development has focused prime consideration upon the relative and correlative roles of magnetic resonance and computed tomography in the early diagnosis of heart disease, including coronary artery disease. In addition, the research emphasis in biomedicine, with the advent of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and with the current focus at the National Institutes of Health on the Roadmap for Biomedical Research in the next decade, has recognized that imaging does and will play a vital role in diagnostic imaging and in fundamental biomedical research. The accelerating energy and number of program initiatives involved with multimodality molecular imaging provide an added opportunity and responsibility for investigators in the field to describe and evaluate the relative roles of imaging modalities that will interdigitate with the growing capabilities in molecular biology, genomics, and proteomics. These new tools will enable new methodologies, which will be deployed in addressing major worldwide health problems including heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Our special issue on cardiac imaging, comparing and contrasting MR and CT, represents a serious effort to define the state-of-the-art in this field. In addition, this compilation of articles sets forth the model that MRI must increasingly be applied, interpreted, and extended in correlation with other modalities used in healthcare and in biomedical research. We are fortunate to have Pamela K. Woodard, MD, Assistant Professor of Radiology, Cardiovascular Imaging Laboratory, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, and Arthur E. Stillman, MD, PhD, Head, Section of Cardiovascular MRI, Division of Radiology, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, as guest editors of our special issue. The editorial board wishes to express its appreciation to them for a job very well done.