Diagnosis of Congenital Heart Disease I

Abstract

Depiction of the anatomy of simple and complex forms of congenital heart disease constitutes the most common clinical indication for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the heart at many centers in the United States. The most frequently applied noninvasive technique for the assessment for congenital heart disease is echocardiography. Consequently, MRI is used in situations in which the information provided by echocardiography is incomplete or cannot be obtained. MRI using the ECG-gated spin-echo technique has been shown to have high diagnostic accuracy for demonstrating the morphologic aspects of many forms of congenital heart disease, including both simple and complex lesions. Due to the ready availability of echocardiography and its greater familiarity, the major uses of MRI in the evaluation of congenital heart disease are aimed at specific indications in which the information is either unique or supplementary to that obtained with echocardiography.