Adult Valvular Disease

Gerber, Bernhard [UCL] et al.

The recent advances in cardiac MR imaging have allowed this technique to become an important method for the non-invasive evaluation of patients with adult valve disease(1). Indeed, similar to echocardiography, cardiac MR can assess the morphology, severity of stenosis and insufficiency of all 4 valves in the adult heart. The important strengths of cMR over other techniques are its ability to quantify severity of valve regurgitations, to precisely measure left and right ventricular volumes and function, to evaluate the great thoracic vessels, and finally to assess associated or related pathology of the myocardium such as myocardial fibrosis or necrosis.