Department of Peri-Operative Cardiology and Cardiovascular Imaging

Cardiovascular MRI

Quick Facts

The Cardiovascular MRI Unit has a mix of professional staff, with a team composed of 8 clinicians between specialists in Cardiology and Radiology, 7 radiology technicians and 8 nurses.

MRI is extremely useful in the assessment of ischaemic, dilated, hypertrophic and congenital cardiomyopathies, arrhythmogenic right ventricular disease, valvulopathies, pericardial diseases and cardiac masses.

The equipment used by Monzino is one of the few installed in the world designed and developed mainly for cardiovascular applications and therefore provides high quality images in this clinical setting.

The Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Unit has a mix of professional staff, with a team composed of 8 clinicians, between specialists in Cardiology and Radiology, 7 radiology technicians and 8 nurses.

MRI is one of the most recent and innovative diagnostic methods in cardiology.

In this field its main applications are:

  • accurate and reliable evaluation of ventricular volumes, the ventricular ejection fraction and myocardial mass, with techniques already used in echocardiography, but with better definition of the endocardial and epicardial contours. Thanks to this and its excellent reproducibility, it is now considered the gold standard method;
  • study of myocardial perfusion and contractile reserve, combining the information generally obtained from different examinations such as echo-stress and nuclear medicine tests in a single diagnostic method;
  • study of myocardial viability by the identification of areas of scarring of the myocardial wall, which is currently fundamental information both for determining the indication for revascularization procedures and for the prognostic stratification of patients with a broad variety of heart disorders.

Thanks to this triple evaluation, MRI can be used in countless clinical contexts such as ischaemic heart disease, dilated cardiomyopathy, myocarditis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic right ventricular disease, congenital heart disorders, valvulopathies, pericardial diseases and the study of cardiac masses.

In addition to the study of heart disease, MRI is a valid alternative to CT in the evaluation of vascular diseases, with the enormous advantage of not using ionizing radiation. This makes MRI safer and increases the repeatability of the examination, especially in patients who require regular, long-term follow-up.

Research Activities

  • The Department as a whole addresses several research topics.
    These are the main ones:

    • superiority of three-dimensional technology in the assessment of right and left atrial function, mitral prolapse and intraoperative monitoring;
    • practicability and accuracy of non-invasive assessment with coronary artery native CT, stent and aorto-coronary bypass;
    • new cardiac CT techniques with reduced radiation doses while maintaining high accuracy in the evaluation of native and stent coronaries;
    • use of cardiac MRI in the development of new methods of studying heart cavities and valve systems;
    • new biomedical engineering approaches in evaluating cardiac image with three-dimensional technology to better follow ventricular remodeling after cardiac surgery and study the dynamics of mitral and aortic valves;
    • collaboration with other Departments for a multidisciplinary approach in specific contexts in the evaluation of patients to undergo electrophysiological procedures, therapies for heart failure, coronary angioplasty procedures, cardiac surgery (in particular in the percutaneous closure of the left auricle, implantation of percutaneous or transapical aortic valves and percutaneous repair with mitral-mitral-clip valve).

Other Activities

  • Educational activities

    Most of the clinicians provide their collaboration with the University of Milan carring on teaching activities.
    The laboratory hosts every 3 months a rotation of specialists in cardiology, and provides the logistics and tutors necessary for the preparation of theses.
    The laboratory also welcomes medical visitors from other Italian and foreign Institutes, for educational purposes.

    National and international scientific activities

    The clinicians are involved in several national and international congresses and courses as speakers.