Role of cardiac MRI in diagnosis of congenital heart diseases

Abstract

Background Patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) are a challenge for imagers, since CHD requires a profound knowledge of the morphologic and functional characteristics of a broad range of congenital heart defects. Patients and methods 39 patients with CHD underwent MRI. In all patients, the abnormalities were demonstrated previously by echocardiography and 12 of them underwent CTA before MRI. The true diagnosis was considered to be the findings shown by 2D echocardiography except for extracardiac anomalies. Results ToF was the commonest CHD evaluated by MRI. The other cases in this study are variety of intra- and extra-cardiac anomalies with some post-operative cases. Cardiac MRI is considered as a valuable modality for evaluation of CHD as compared to other modalities it has much to offer by (a) generating high-resolution morphological images (b) offering quantitative information of the severity of regurgitant or stenotic lesions and (c) quantification of shunt. Conclusion Cardiac MRI provides a powerful tool, giving anatomic and haemodynamic information that echocardiography and catheterization alone do not provide. Finally, cardiovascular MR surpasses both catheterization and echo in its ability to create high resolution, three-dimentional reconstructions of complex CHD.