Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death and disability in western society.
The accurate and reproducible measurement of cardiac function is important for monitoring disease progression and responses to therapy. Principal Consultant Martin Westhead reports. Image production is based on the magnetic properties of protons within the human body and their interaction with static and time-varying magnetic fields. Such techniques can generate in excess of 500 images. Currently the clinical use of such scans is limited to qualitative assessment since software tools are not available to effectively analyse the images.