Dear Cardiac Imaging Insider,
Cardiac MRI with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has made rapid clinical progress over recent years, and the extent of this progress was underlined by a top award won by Spanish researchers at ECR 2018.
The group, led by Dr. Jordi Broncano Cabrero from Córdoba, showed precisely how DWI can depict the presence of myocardial edema in ischemic and inflammatory heart disease, and also can help in the characterization of cardiac masses as well as for follow-up and treatment monitoring in both acute myocarditis and cardiac masses. To get the full story, click here.
Three-dimensional printing was another hot topic at the Vienna congress. In back-to-back presentations at the meeting, investigators from Switzerland and Italy elaborated on the potential of using the technology to facilitate left atrial appendage closure. Find out more here.
In the U.K., designers have created 3D-printed hearts in a range of materials that mimic the texture of different tissue types, allowing surgeons to simulate procedures such as device implantation case by case prior to surgery. Clinical trials are underway on heart models for 25 adults with atrial septal defects who are to receive implanted devices. Click here to learn more.
The human heart was one of the organs studied by Belgian researchers who found that radiation dose conversion factors decrease with increasing patient size. This will result in a decreasing general conversion factor with increasing patient size, according to lead author An Dedulle, from the University of Leuven. To read more, click here.
Dr. Marc Dewey from Berlin was a keynote speaker at ECR 2018, and he's senior author of a Germany/U.S. project that has evaluated the diagnostic performance of CT perfusion and MR perfusion in patients suspected of having coronary artery disease. What did the investigators find? Click here for the details.
This letter features only a few of the many articles published recently in the Cardiac Imaging Community. Please scroll through the full list of our coverage below.
