Masselli Gabriele. MRI of Fetal and Maternal Diseases in Pregnancy

Springer, 2016. — 510 p. — ISBN: 978-3-319-21427-6.The aim of this book is to provide basic information on fetal and maternal MRI in pregnancy for both the examiners and the referring clinicians.
MR methods are described in detail and safety aspects are discussed. The prerequisites for MRI are described, including patient preparation, as is the appropriate selection of MR parameters for the respective clinical issues.
The advances made in MRI techniques have overcome the technical diffi culties of imaging a structure that is affected by both fetal and maternal motions.
In recent years, MRI has become a useful element in the decision-making process for fetal abnormalities and maternal diseases in pregnancy, proving to offer unequivocal advantages over ultrasound.
In order to fully exploit the potential of this modality, the MR characteristics of the resulting morphological and functional information are analyzed.
Normal and pathological organ development are described on various MR sequences, including advanced MR imaging techniques illustrated in numerous fi gures.
This book is edited and written by people who are actively involved on a daily basis in clinical fetal MRI and imaging of pregnant patients on routine MR scanners.
All the authors have extensive experience in MRI of fetal and maternal diseases in pregnancy. By writing this book, they wish to pass on their own expertise, providing both guidance to those who are new to this fi eld and advice to those who use more advanced applications. The reader should thus be able glean comprehensive information on each of the topics covered.
This text is produced with the intent of illustrating proven imaging fi ndings, explaining pathologic basis for those fi ndings, and discussing the use of MRI methods in the context of contributing signifi cantly to diagnosis and guiding management.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the authors for their outstanding contributions.
I sincerely believe that this book will serve as a useful reference for the daily interpretation of fetal and maternal diseases in pregnancy. To achieve this goal, the textbook is extensively illustrated and includes tables with normal values and practical schemes.
The examiner should carefully assess both fetal and maternal organs, without neglecting maternal structures when fetal MRI is performed and vice versa. As shown in the fi gure above in a patient presenting for characterization of a left ovarian mass, MR detected the unexpected hemorrhage in the right cerebral ventricle of the fetus, which means that it is important to consider all the structures that appear in the images, even when focusing on a particular organ.
I hope that this book helps you to understand and fully appreciate the challenging, though exciting, world of imaging of the fetus and the mother in pregnancy, and that it provides helpful practical advice regarding the indications and performing of MRI as well as the interpretation of findings.