Case-based Atlas of Cardiac Imaging

This atlas of cardiac imaging provides a rich collection of cases illustrative of a variety of pathologies, ranging from congenital to infection and adult acquired heart diseases.

The book starts with a chapter on the interpretation of chest radiographs. This provides an exhaustive description of normal and abnormal findings with radiographs of excellent image quality that will be useful for anyone beginning in cardiac imaging.

The section on congenital heart disease (CHD) is a dominant feature in the book. The first chapter describes the approach to CHD and morphological features of the cardiac chambers. Although useful, it would have been better if the text was supplemented with images to better explain the concepts.

The first case is demonstrated in chapter three. It assumes a certain understanding of CHD and abbreviations are not fully spelled out. The arrangement of subsections is confusing as the textual description seem to precede the images. The authors have provided different variations of a particular CHD (without accompanying clinical information in some cases) before explaining the main CHD in detail. However, the description of each CHD at the end of each chapter is useful, particularly for a beginner.

The cardiomyopathy section begins with cases of presumed myocarditis and sarcoidosis with varying degrees of ventricular dysfunction. Again, the steps to diagnosis are described before the images without challenging the mind of the reader. There is no mention whether any of these cases underwent endocardial or other biopsy. Cardiac MRI is the main modality in this section. It is disappointing that understanding of the utility of different sequences used for the diagnosis is not explained. This is less so in the chapters on ischaemic cardiomyopathy and its complications. The sections on cardiac masses and coronary artery anomalies are better organised and allow better understanding of the approach to differential diagnosis. The book does not cover coronary artery disease and valvular heart disease.

One of the drawbacks of cardiac MRI in book form is the lack of ability to appreciate the function in cine mode unless the publishers provide them online. For certain pathologies, echocardiography images would have been useful. The images of most of the cases appear small where they are presented as four in a row, making it difficult to appreciate the findings.

Overall, I found this atlas provides a wide variety of cases on cardiac pathologies but with a particular emphasis on CHD. There is a lack of a step-by-step approach to diagnosis using imaging, and clinical information is also lacking for the most part, something that would be expected from such an atlas. As a result, this book will be more useful for an intermediate to advanced learner to refer to the variety of case pathologies rather than a beginner.

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