ABSTRACT
In people, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is routinely used to depict cardiac morphology, flow, and function, as well as myocardial structure. In companion animals, the evaluation of cardiac morphology and function has mainly been based on echocardiographic evaluation and cardiac catheterization. Until recently, cardiac MRI (cMRI) in animals has been focused on naturally occurring or experimentally produced animal models of human diseases such as cardiomyopathy, muscular dystrophy, myocardial infarction, and pulmonary hypertension. Early reports of the thoracic MR anatomy in dogs produced low-quality images with little detail of the cardiovascular structures, mostly due to artifacts resulting from cardiac and respiratory motion. These problems have been overcome through cardiac gating, respiratory navigation, and encoding strategies that speed up acquisition times to values compatible with in-vivo imaging. The chapter provides a brief overview of the information that can be gained and examples of some clinical applications.
