Radiologists should be aware of the spectrum of infectious and inflammatory conditions that can affect the heart and the role of MRI in conjunction with other imaging techniques in their assessment.

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A preliminary examination of the relationship between the infant mortality of US birth cohorts and their mortality in later life suggested that infant mortality from diarrhoea and enteritis was particularly influential. In the 1917-21 birth cohorts of 17 US Registration States, infant mortality from diarrhoea and enteritis was significantly related to arteriosclerotic heart disease at ages 40-44 and 50-54 in both sexes, and to respiratory cancer at the same ages in men, after controlling for contemporary infant mortality. Hypotheses suggested by these relationships are put forward.

Purpose:To derive reproducibility assessments of ejection fraction (EF) and left ventricular mass (LVM) from shortaxis cardiac MR images acquired at single and multiple time-points on different 1.5T scanner models. Materials and Methods:Images of 15 healthy volunteers were acquired twice using a Magnetom Avanto scanner (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) and once using a Signa Excite scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI, USA) over four months, and analyzed using ARGUS and MASS Analysisϩ software, respectively. Two physicists independently segmented the myocardial borders in order to derive intraand interobserver assessments of EF and LVM for single and multiple time-points on the same and different scanners.Results: For EF, the coefficient of repeatability (CoR) increased as different observers, multiple time-points, and different scanners were introduced. The CoR ranged from 2.8% (intraobserver measurements, single time-point, same scanner) to 10.0% (interobserver measurements, different timepoints, different scanners). For LVM, intraobserver CoR parameters were consistently smaller than interobserver values. The CoR ranged from 7.8 g (intraobserver measurements, single time-point, same scanner) to 39.5 g (interobserver measurements, different time-points, different scanners). Conclusion:Reproducible EF data can be obtained at single or multiple time-points using different scanners. However, LVM is notably susceptible to interobserver variation, and this should be carefully considered if similar evaluations are planned as part of multicenter or longitudinal investigations. CARDIAC MRI HAS DEVELOPED into a useful clinical tool for evaluating human left ventricular morphology and function (1,2). In particular, quantitative assessments of ejection fraction (EF) and left ventricular mass (LVM) have the potential to provide useful clinical endpoints for longitudinal examinations designed to monitor changes to morphology or function in response to therapy. Previous reports have described how MRI can be used to establish cardiac morphology and function relative to other imaging modalities such as echocardiography, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), or computed tomography (3-7). Similar techniques have also been validated against animal models (8) and postmortem humans (9,10), and this information, together with the results of reproducibility studies on healthy volunteers (11-13), has resulted in MRI evolving into a most reliable technique for examining cardiac morphology in patients.The reproducibility of cardiac MRI for morphological assessment is governed principally by the methods in which the data are acquired and analyzed. Data acquisition requires utilization of suitable sequences and careful planning of localizer images to identify the appropriate short-axis image plane. Rapid cardiac-gated steady-state gradient-echo sequences such as true fast imaging with steady precession (TrueFISP), fast imaging employing steady state acquisition (FIESTA), or balanced fast field echo (FFE) are commonly used, s...