Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
The potential role of MRI in veterinary clinical cardiology.
- Journal:
- Veterinary journal (London, England : 1997)
- Year:
- 2010
- Authors:
- Gilbert, Stephen H et al.
- Affiliation:
- Multidisciplinary Cardiac Research Centre and Institute of Membrane and Systems Biology · United Kingdom
- Species:
- horse
Plain-English summary
In recent years, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become a valuable tool in veterinary medicine, especially for diagnosing issues in small animals like dogs and cats. While MRI is commonly used for problems related to the brain, spine, and soft tissues, its application in heart imaging, known as cardiac MRI (CMRI), is still developing. This technique can provide detailed images of the heart's structure and function, but it has not yet been widely adopted in veterinary practice, mainly being used in research settings. The article reviews existing studies on CMRI technology and discusses why it hasn't been more commonly used in everyday veterinary care. Overall, while CMRI shows promise for heart assessments in pets, its use remains limited at this time.
Abstract
Over the last decade, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become established as a useful referral diagnostic method in veterinary medicine that is widely used in small animal brain and spinal diseases, aural, nasal and orbital disorders, planning soft tissue surgery, oncology and small animal and equine orthopaedics. The use of MRI in these disciplines has grown due to its unparalleled capability to image soft tissue structures. This has been exploited in human cardiology where, despite the inherent difficulties in imaging a moving, contractile structure, cardiac MRI (CMRI) has become the optimal technique for the morphological assessment and quantification of ventricular function. Both CMRI hardware and software systems have developed rapidly in the last 10 years but although several preliminary veterinary CMRI studies have been reported, the technique's growth has been limited and is currently used primarily in clinical research. A review of published studies is presented with a description of CMRI technology and the potential of CMRI is discussed along with some of the reasons for its limited usage.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19136284/