Depiction of myocardial crypts in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy by cardiovascular MRI.

Myocardial crypts are increasingly recognised as a novel MRI marker of genotype-positive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and have been the subject of several recent landmark imaging papers. Maron et al 1 have shown that 61% of genotype-positive/phenotype-negative HCM patients (cohort derived from screening family members of known HCM) have myocardial crypts. Conversely, the prevalence of myocardial crypts is low (4%) in patients who are both genotype and phenotype positive for HCM. The emerging use of myocardial crypt identification on MRI may therefore be to identify family members of HCM patients who are likely to be asymptomatic HCM mutation carriers.1–3 A 20-year-old man having normal blood pressure was found to have asymmetric …