Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance

Professor Dudley Pennell, Head of Group

The Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Unit was established in 1984 making it one of the very first to specialise in cardiovascular imaging and research. The CMR Unit has pioneered contributions in the field over 25 years in the assessment of cardiomyopathy, flow, rapid imaging, atheroma, coronaries, myocardial perfusion, volume/mass assessment and valvular disease. The CMR Unit is an international referral centre, performing about 5,000 clinical cardiovascular CMR studies per year as well as a substantial number of research projects leading to 40-60 peer reviewed papers annually. The dedicated staff numbering 30 in total, have extensive experience is this field allowing excellence in clinical practice, teaching and research.

The CMR Unit has three 1.5T scanners. Two are fixed site Siemens Avanto scanner, and the third is a mobile Siemens Sonata scanner. The Unit has strong IT infrastructure with fully networked scanners and a data archive holding all scans for >7 years, all of which are immediately available at any PC in the Unit using custom written software CMRtools, which is on constant development in collaboration with Imperial College department of computing.