MRI may soon be used to diagnose heart disease

Washington: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to measure how the heart uses oxygen for both healthy patients and those with heart disease, a study has found.

Reduced blood flow to the heart muscle is the leading cause of death in the Western world, said researchers from Lawson Health Research Institute and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the US. Currently, the diagnostic tests available to measure blood flow to the heart require injection of radioactive chemicals or contrast agents that change the MRI signal and detect the presence of disease.

There are small but finite associated risks and it is not recommended for a variety of patients including those with poor kidney function.

"This new method, cardiac functional MRI (cfMRI), does not require needles or chemicals being injected into the body," said Frank Prato, from Lawson Health Research Institute. "It eliminates the existing risks and can be used on all patients," Prato said.

"Our discovery shows that we can use MRI to study heart muscle activity," said Prato.

"We have been successful in using a pre-clinical model and now we are preparing to show this can be used to accurately detect heart disease in patients," he said.

Repeat exposure to carbon dioxide is used to test how well the heart's blood vessels are working to deliver oxygen to the muscle.A breathing machine changes the concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood.

This change should result in a change in blood flow to the heart, but does not happen when disease is present.