Cardiac MRI in Mumbai

What cardiac MRI adds

Echocardiography and CT both have their place. What cardiac MRI does that neither can is characterise the heart muscle itself — telling healthy muscle from scarred, inflamed, infiltrated or fatty tissue. It also measures volumes and ejection fraction more accurately and more reproducibly than any other method, which matters when a treatment decision turns on whether a number sits above or below a threshold.

There is no radiation. The pictures come from a strong magnetic field and radio waves.

When it is advised

Viability before angioplasty or bypass

After a heart attack, part of the muscle may be dead scar and part may be alive but underperforming. Opening the artery helps the second, not the first. Late gadolinium enhancement shows the difference directly, and can spare a patient a procedure that was never going to help — or justify one that will.

Cardiomyopathy

When the heart is weak or thickened and the reason is unclear, the pattern of scar on MRI often names the cause: previous infarction, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, Fabry disease, or ARVC.

Myocarditis

Inflammation of the heart muscle, often after a viral illness, can mimic a heart attack. MRI distinguishes them without an angiogram in many cases.

Risk assessment before an ICD

Scar burden and its distribution refine who is genuinely at risk of dangerous rhythms, beyond ejection fraction alone.

Other uses

• Cardiac masses and thrombus
• Pericardial disease, including constriction
• Iron overload in thalassaemia, using T2* mapping
• Valve leaks quantified by flow measurement
• Congenital heart disease in adults

What the scan involves

• Thirty to sixty minutes lying still inside the scanner
• Repeated breath-holds of around ten seconds — practise these beforehand, they make the biggest difference to image quality
• ECG stickers on the chest to synchronise imaging with your heartbeat
• A gadolinium contrast injection through a cannula in most studies
• The scanner is loud; you will be given headphones or earplugs
• Nothing to recover from afterwards

Tell the team beforehand about any pacemaker, defibrillator, metal implant, surgical clip or previous metalwork injury, and about kidney problems, which affect whether contrast can be used. Many modern cardiac devices are MRI-conditional, but the scan must be set up specifically.

Who reports it matters

A cardiac MRI is only as useful as its report. The scan produces a large volume of data, and knowing which findings change management requires both imaging training and clinical cardiology. Dr Yadav has reported cardiac MRI and CT at LTMG Hospital, Sion since 2021 under the mentorship of Dr Nitin Burkule, and completed a dedicated imaging fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital in 2026.