of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2009

There were 56 articles published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in 2009. The editors were impressed with the high quality of the submissions, of which our acceptance rate was about 40%. In accordance with open-access publishing, the articles go on-line as they are accepted with no collating of the articles into sections or special thematic issues. We have therefore chosen to briefly summarise the papers in this article for quick reference for our readers in broad areas of interest, which we feel will be useful to practitioners of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). In some cases where it is considered useful, the articles are also put into the wider context with a short narrative and recent CMR references. It has been a privilege to serve as the Editor of the JCMR this past year. I hope that you find the open-access system increases wider reading and citation of your papers, and that you will continue to send your quality manuscripts to JCMR for publication. Ventricular volumes, function and mass A dual propagation contours technique for semiautomated assessment of systolic and diastolic cardiac function Despite the known accuracy and reproducibility of CMR for the measurement of ventricular volumes and mass based on manual contour delineation, given the effort required, there is great enthusiasm for improvement and especially automation of the analysis. Recent papers have focussed on accelerated imaging [1,2], right ventricular (RV) function [3], and diastolic function [4]. In this study, Feng described a novel approach to semi-automated segmentation of the left ventricle (LV) with the aim of more accurately derive ejection and filling rates from volume time curves [5]. They used manually drawn end-systolic and end-diastolic contours and their algorithm used both forward and backward propagation to identify the rest of the contours. In both normals and hypertensive patients, this approach was shown to more closely follow throughout the cardiac cycle the manually drawn contours than previously described approaches that use only forward propagation from one time point. The automated analysis time saving (vs the manual approach) was considerable with an analysis time reduction from 4 hours to just 7 minutes. Electrocardiographic (ECG) criteria for determining LV mass in young healthy men; data from the LARGE Heart study Doubts remain over the use of the ECG in identifying those with LV hypertrophy (LVH), which is particularly marked in young individuals because of high prevalence of ECG criteria for LVH. Sohaib compared ECG criteria of LVH with CMR as a gold standard in 101 male army recruits [6]. The paired sensitivity and specificity values for 4 ECG indices of LVH showed poor accuracy and the authors concluded that they have little value in young fit males. Determinants of LV mass in obesity This study examined a group of 38 obese individuals, without additional cardiovascular disease risk factors, compared to normal weight controls [7]. LV mass and volumes were assessed with CMR. From a large set of CMR and anthropometric measurements, the study sought to determine the main predictors of LV mass. These were found to be lean body mass, LV stroke volume and abdominal visceral fat mass. These findings help with our understanding of the determinants of LV hypertrophy in obesity. * Correspondence: d.pennell@ic.ac. uk 1 CMR Unit Royal Brompton Hospital, Sydney Street, London SW3 6NP UK. National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, Exhibition Road, London,