The use of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging for the evaluation of pulmonary hypertension

Purpose Evaluate the utility of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging to estimate the principle hemodynamic parameters that are measured by right heart catheterization in a noninvasive manner i.e. mean pulmonary artery pressure, pulmonary vascular resistance and pulmonary artery wedge pressure through cardiac magnetic resonance based numerical models. Materials and methods 29 pulmonary hypertension patients, fitting the inclusion criteria were randomly selected and included in the study. CMR Imaging and right side heart catheter (RHC) were performed within one month. 3 Cardiac MRI based models in literature that showed high accuracy were tested. Two equations for mPAP calculation; mPAP=-231.423 + 53.8(loge inter-ventricular septal angle)+log10(right ventricular mass divided by left ventricular mass) i.e ventricular mass index X 8.708+area of pulmonary artery in diastole X 0.009 and mPAP = –4.6+(0.32*septal angle)+(ventricular mass index × 16.3). One equation for PAWP; PAWP = left atrial volume index +6.43 × 0.22. Results The Altman and Bland correlation between mPAP invasively measured and CMR-estimated mPAP had good correlation with r= 0.594 and r=0.599 (P