Interventional Cardiovascular MRI

Interventional cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (iCMR) is potentially revolutionary because of the exquisite tissue and blood imaging afforded to guide therapeutic procedures. By making small compromises in spatial or temporal resolution, and with little or no modifications to commercial high-performance magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, images can be acquired and displayed almost instantaneously to operators. This may be useful simply to avoid ionizing radiation during conventional catheter-based procedures, especially in children. Perhaps more important, iCMR promises to enable more advanced procedures not otherwise possible without open surgical exposure.