The Use of Contrast-Enhancement Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Cardiomyopathies

The clinical applications of cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR), are expanding as the result of the development in hardware, pulse sequence and the ability of post-processing techniques. As the result of the flexibility of CMR to use different pulsesequences, with or without the use of Gadolinium, CMR has developed as a powerful tool for clinical relevant tissue characterization. CMR in combination with the contrastenhancement (CE) technique was initially developed to distinguish viable from non-viable myocardium following myocardial infarction. Nowadays, CE-CMR is increasingly used for tissue characterization in ischemic as well as non-ischemic cardiomyopathies to determine the exact etiology, guide proper treatment, and predict outcome and prognosis. In this chapter, we would like to discuss and illustrate the value of CE-CMR imaging in various cardiomyopathies.