Imaging congenital heart disease.

When defined in a broad sense, imaging is the most important aspect of modern pediatric cardiovascular medicine. Definition of anatomic defects is now accurately and easily obtained with physical inspection, x-ray technology (including roentgenology, fluoroscopy, and cineangiography), and echocardiography. Echocardiography, with the addition of Doppler and color flow Doppler, is the most important development in clinical cardiac imaging in the past decade. The exciting new areas of "imaging" are in cardiac functional analysis and metabolic evaluation. Viewing the heart at the cellular or biochemical level is the challenge of the future. The new technology offered by computed tomography, positron emission tomography, and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging begins to provide the ability to image the domain of cellular and biochemical function.