Quantitative cardiovascular imaging

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in advanced countries and its prevalence is increasing among developing countries. Various imaging modalities are increasingly used in the diagnostic evaluation of cardiovascular disease, among which cardiac computed tomography (CT) angiography, cardiac MR, and echocardiography represent the most commonly performed imaging examinations in routine clinical practice, while nuclear medicine imaging such as cardiac single photon emission CT (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) is also frequently used to provide functional assessment of cardiovascular disease (1-5). Quantitative analysis of cardiac images enables more accurate and reliable assessment of cardiovascular risk, and depiction of subtle changes. The goal of this special issue is to bring together experts in the field of cardiac imaging research to foster engagement across areas of cardiac imaging techniques and to identify novel applications to challenging cardiovascular problems. This special issue will give particular attention to contributions describing the state of the art, advantages and disadvantages, current limitations and future directions of the use of cardiac imaging modalities in the quantitative analysis of cardiovascular disease. The special issue has 15 papers consisting of 2 research articles, 7 review papers, 2 case reports, 2 commentaries, 1 images of the issue and 1 special report. Details of these papers are as follows