Cardiac MRI vs Echocardiogram: which heart scan do you need?

A cardiac MRI and an echocardiogram are both imaging scans of the heart that tell you a lot of very similar information, how well the heart's pumping, what the valves are doing, are the valves opening well, are they leaking at all. But a heart MRI or a cardiac MRI actually adds tremendous value in one particular regard. Whilst an echocardiogram can show you how thick the walls of the heart are, a cardiac MRI can actually show you if there is any inflammation or scarring in the heart muscle, something we call tissue characterisation. And that's really where the incremental value is in a cardiac MRI because we can tell whether you've had a heart attack, whether your heart is inflamed from a condition such as myocarditis, or whether you have a lack of blood supply in the heart muscle if we undertake a stress perfusion cardiac MRI.