Imaging and Quantification of Cardiac Sarcoidosis

Abstract

Cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) refers to the increasingly recognized cardiac involvement of an incompletely understood systemic disease entity-sarcoidosis. Endomyocardial biopsy can provide definitive diagnosis but is limited by its invasiveness and poor sensitivity. In the absence of a reliable gold standard, a combination of clinical, electrocardiographic, imaging, and histologic criteria are relied upon to provide probabilistic diagnosis. Within the last few years, societal documents have included advanced cardiovascular imaging modalities, ¹⁸F-FDG-PET/CT and cardiac magnetic resonance in their diagnostic algorithms. The current article provides a review of the imaging modalities used for screening and detection of CS, highlighting the principal findings of each with a specific focus on quantification, whenever applicable, and concluding with a proposed approach to the imaging of patients with suspected CS.