The prognostic value of late gadolinium enhancement CMR in nonischemic cardiomyopathies.

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is a valuable clinical tool in everyday practice providing additional information to echocardiography. The late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) technique is now part of nearly every CMR protocol and enables in-vivo tissue characterization in ischemic (identification of scaring due to infarction) and many nonischemic cardiomyopathies (identification of regional or patchy fibrosis or infiltration). This review presents the evolving prognostic evidence base of LGE-CMR with a particular focus on nonischemic cardiomyopathies. Novel methods to assess diffuse myocardial fibrosis such as pre- and post-contrast T1-mapping are also discussed