The progress in diagnosis and prognosis of myocarditis with late gadolinium enhancement MRI

It is reported that myocarditis accounts for 12% in adolescent sudden death. Viral infection or post-viral immune-mediated reaction leads to myocardial injury. Up to now, no any clinical or imaging methods can be used to confidently made diagnosis of myocarditis. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging is a safe, noninvasive modality which can provide information of cardiac anatomy and function, and can evaluate the change in myocardial signal intensity using skeletal muscle as a reference. Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) on MRI can reflect irreversible myocardial injury in myocarditis and its specificity of the diagnosis is up to 86%. Moreover, LGE plays an important role in differentiating between ischemic and nonischemic myocardial injury and estimating prognosis of myocardial lesions, especially myocarditis. (authors)