Evaluation of the Cardiac Function by MRI in Children

Abstract

Cardiac MRI is generally considered the reference standard for the assessment of ventricular dimensions, function, and mass in terms of accuracy and reproducibility, and this is reflected by class I–II recommendations for the clinical use of cardiac MRI by recent consensus panels. However, a general problem in the interpretation of such data is the fact that cardiac growth is known to be allometric, that is, the relation between the size of the heart and the body changes from infancy to adulthood .Moreover, such allometric growth is likely to be different between the sexes. This renders any age group definition somewhat arbitrary because sex differences in the speed of maturation and cardiac growth are not accounted for, thus limiting the scientific and clinical value of age group– based reference data. The relation between the size of the heart and the body is known to be allometric, which means that this relation changes from infancy to adulthood. This makes the generation of normative data challenging. However, the ability to accurately measure volumetric and mass parameters of right and left ventricular function, adequately scaled to body size, is of critical importance both for clinical care and for cardiovascular health research