Matthias G. Friedrich, MD FESC

Matthias Friedrich earned his MD in 1990 in Erlangen, Germany. He completed his cardiology training in Berlin, Germany with cardiac intensive care, invasive and non-invasive imaging as his main areas of interest. Among other responsibilities, he served as the Deputy Director of the Cardiology Department (Franz-Volhard-Klinik) at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin.

Since his time as a graduate student he has been active in research using Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR). In 1991, he published his first paper on CMR spectroscopy. His main scientific interest, though, has been tissue characterization in acute and chronic heart disease. In 1995, he founded the CMR working group at the Humboldt University in Berlin and published several seminal papers on the clinical use of CMR in cardiomyopathies and myocarditis in the subsequent years.

In 2004, he assumed the position of the Director of the Stephenson Cardiovascular MR Centre Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta in Calgary. He holds an appointment as Associate Professor for Medicine with the Departments of Cardiac Sciences and Radiology at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Friedrich has published more than 80 papers and book chapters on CMR, is a reviewer for several grant agencies, numerous specialty journals, and a member of several editorial boards. For 2007 and 2008, he was the Chair of the Program Committee of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR). In 2005, Dr. Friedrich founded the Canadian Society for Cardiovascular MR and is its elected President.

New Approaches to Imaging in Acute Infarction: The Role of CT and MRI

Electrocardiograms, biomarkers, and ventricular function studies are diagnostic tools that are currently used to assess patients with acute myocardial disease. These tools are limited in their diagnostic accuracy and scope. Thus, for informed therapeutic decision making, tissue characterization may serve as a very important source of information in these initially regional diseases. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is becoming an important tool for phenotyping cardiac patients in vivo. Recent advances of CMR hardware and software as well as protocols have allowed for accurately visualizing tissue changes in patients with acute myocardial diseases. This is of special interest for acute myocardial infarction and acute myocarditis, because these entities may have a very similar clinical presentation and require immediate therapeutic decision making. Several CMR approaches can be combined in a comprehensive CMR examination, which provides information not only on ventricular size, morphology, and function, but also on the stage, degree, and extent of reversible and irreversible myocardial injury.

Streamlined protocols allow such a CMR examination to be a time- and cost-efficient diagnostic tool, even in patients with acute disease. Current CMR approaches for visualizing tissue pathology in vivo are reviewed, examples are presented, and the potential role of CMR tissue characterization in patients with acute myocardial disease is discussed. The specific role of imaging the extent and regional distribution of myocardial edema and necrosis is discussed. (J AmColl Cardiol Img 2008;1:652-62)©2008 by the American College of Cardiology Foundation.