Focus on Technology: Cardiac MRI Science Fiction in Today’s Medicine?
Imagine being able to watch a live moving image of your heart beating. Sound like science fiction? It’s not. Today, more and more hospitals are using a technology called cardiac MRI that produces some of the most amazingly detailed and sharp images of the heart in action.
A cardiac MRI (which stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is a safe, non-invasive procedure. There is no radiation involved. During the exam, the patient lies still for about 30 minutes as he or she moves through a large doughnut-shaped opening. A cardiac MRI uses radio waves and a powerful magnetic field to produce both still and moving pictures of the heart on a computer screen. These images show physicians precisely where heart tissue has been damaged as well as how well the heart is working. A cardiac MRI is especially effective in diagnosing the cause of a stroke, which occurs when an artery that supplies blood to the brain bursts or is blocked by a clot. When someone suffers a stroke, a physician needs to determine whether the stroke is caused by a clot or by bleeding in the brain. Physicians currently use echocardiography to detect these clots, but new studies indicate that a cardiac MRI does a better job of detecting the cause of a stroke. A cardiac MRI is also used by physicians to detect coronary artery disease, heart failure, heart valve problems, congenital heart defects and the damage caused by a heart attack.
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