The year in cardiology 2014: imaging.

Abstract

Non-invasive cardiac imaging is pivotal for the diagnosis and decision making of patients with cardiovascular diseases. Recent innovations in echocardiography, nuclear imaging, computed tomography, and cardiac magnetic resonance have provided novel pathophysiological insights that may impact on the clinical management of patients. The current review provides a summary of selected articles on technological innovations in imaging and emerging clinical applications. In 2014, many articles were published on the use of non-invasive cardiovascular imaging, including echocardiography, nuclear imaging, computed tomography (CT), and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. A selection of these articles is presented here. The focus is on technical innovations and emerging applications in clinical cardiology. Accumulating data have demonstrated the role of speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) in characterization left ventricular (LV) mechanics and risk stratification of patients with various cardiac diseases. Geske et al .1 demonstrated that LV septal morphology rather than genetic basis is the main determinant of regional LV strain abnormalities in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Genotype-positive HCM patients ( n = 51) were more likely to have reverse curve morphology of the interventricular septum (59%) whereas genotype-negative patients ( n = 80) had more frequently sigmoidal septal curvature (49%). Interestingly, while global LV strain (GLS) was not significantly different between groups, regional strain analysis revealed that genotype-positive HCM patients had significantly more impaired longitudinal strain in the mid inferoseptal, basal inferoseptal, and basal anteroseptal regions compared with genotype-negative patients. When patients were divided according to genotype and LV septal morphology, LV GLS was significantly more impaired among genotype-positive HCM patients with a reverse septal curvature than in genotype-negative HCM patients with a sigmoid septal morphology ( Figure 1 ). Figure 1 Speckle tracking echocardiography …