Abstract
Imaging plays an important role in diagnosis, preoperative planning, and postoperative management for children with acquired heart disease. A wide variety of imaging modalities are available, with some significant overlap between modalities. With a concerted effort to decrease health care costs, it is important to understand the role of each imaging modality in order to minimize unneeded duplication of diagnostic information. It is even more important to maximize a single imaging modality for children, as anesthesia is often required for proper imaging. Throughout this book, recommendations for imaging are made with children in mind, with the objectives of reducing costs of duplicated information and maximizing the amount of diagnostic information obtained by choosing the most appropriate imaging modality.