Cardiac and Thoracic MRI is a very brief manual which illustrates selected normal and abnormal anatomy of cardiothoracic MRI. The book is divided into two sections: normal anatomy and abnormal cases. In the normal anatomy section, there are images obtained at 0.35 T as well as images obtained at 1.5 T and a few gradient echo images. The 0.35-T images are excellent in quality. They reveal the basic central cardiovascular anatomy in axial, coronal, and sagittal planes in a reasonably complete manner, Limited depictions of oblique imaging planes are included. The 1.5-T images are degraded by motion artifacts and do not reveal anatomy already covered more clearly on medium field images. Presentation of identical slices at two field strengths does not seem useful in a text this brief. Only normal gradient echo images are shown and blood flow dynamics is not presented. The abnormal cases demonstrate some common anomalies of the central cardiovascular system but the range of anomalies is too limited to be of value to the cardiac imager. An important limitation of this atlas is lack of depiction of artifacts imitating disease such as normal thinning of the atrial septum and blood flow artifact mimicking clot or dissection. These artifacts are commonly misread as pathology by the occasional MRI cardiac imager.
This brief pocket atlas may be of considerable value to a medical student or resident during a cardiac radiology rotation. I believe it would be of limited value to practicing radiologists, cardiologists, or thoracic surgeons. Physicians performing cardiac MRI should consult a more detailed reference.