Foreword

Article Outline

• Copyright

The assessment of myocardial viability has become an integral part of the assessment and evaluation of many patients with coronary artery disease, especially in those who have left ventricular dysfunction or have had or have a history of previous myocardial infarction.

The standard noninvasive techniques to assess viability have included dobutamine echocardiography, radionuclide studies, and positron imaging tomography. These techniques are very useful and there is a large database of the values of these tests. However, all of them have limitations.

Recently, cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging has entered the clinical arena in the evaluation of viability. It has many advantages including the “more” accurate imaging of myocardial infarction and the quantitation of its extent.

The group at Northwestern University has a great deal of expertise in this field. Drs Bonow, Klocke, and coworkers have put together an excellent, expert review of this topic that will be valuable to all in clinical cardiology. The Editorial Board and I are grateful to them for this review and also to Dr Christopher Kramer^⁎ for his insightful and superb comments.

• ⁎ Dr Christopher M. Kramer is an Associate Professor, Department of Medicine and Radiology, and Director of MRI at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, VA 22908.