Standard views in cardiac multimodality tomographic imaging.

In cardiology, it is often necessary to acquire more than one type of image to investigate a given clinical problem of a single patient. Images obtained from different imaging modalities are usually recorded and displayed in different orientations, at different positions, and at different scale factors. It is then necessary for the physician to mentally integrate the image information from the different imaging modalities. This phenomenon is particularly true with tomographic imaging techniques that allow complete freedom of the acquisition plane. In particular, when comparing images obtained from ultrasound, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron-emission tomography, and single-photon emission computed tomography. The purpose of this article is to propose a standard set of slice orientations that could be easily applied to all modalities. Such common views could greatly facilitate the user's perception of the regional abnormalities observed in the different imaging modalities. This standardization is certainly useful for clinical application but also for every research study that requires a comparative evaluation of the different imaging modalities. Although exact registration of the images from the different modalities requires sophisticated computer programs, the simple reference method in plane positioning proposed here based on plane orientation according to the cardiac geometry can certainly provide a practical and convenient method for the reasonably accurate image registration required for visual comparative studies.