Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in Ischemic Heart Disease: CMR in IHD

Ischemic heart disease is one of the leading causes of death and disability, limiting individual’s quality of life. Cardiac magnetic resonance is radiation-free tool to image IHD patients and can depict inducible ischemia, extent and distribution of scar burden, associated complications like mitral regurgitation, thrombus, aneurysm formation, myocardial rupture, and any other incidental pathology. With increasing availability of the CMR there is an ever increasing need to interpret these images by non-imaging clinicians in order to manage patients more effectively. In this article, image interpretation for detection of ischemia, infarct and thrombus are discussed in simple easy to understand manner leaving behind intricate technical details which are of less important to the referring physicians.