Rafaela Soler

Cardiomyopathies are diseases of the myocardium of unknown etiology associated with cardiac dysfunction. On the grounds of their morphology and pathophysiology, primary or idiopathic cardiomyopathies may be classified into a number of disorders; namely, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy, and restrictive cardiomyopathy. The term "secondary cardiomyopathies" is reserved to specific heart muscle diseases clinically very similar to primary cardiomyopathies. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging has long been used to study cardiac morphology and, more recently, to assess blood flow, perfusion, and contractile function. The emerging role of magnetic resonance imaging for the understanding and treatment of primary cardiomyopathies cannot be underestimated. From a clinical point of view, an examination based on a single, efficient, and noninvasive MR study focusing on the clinically relevant features of cardiomyopathies is an objective and reproducible means for diagnosing and monitoring hypertrophic, arrhythmogenic, dilated, and restrictive cardiomyopathies.

Castleman's disease can involve a number of organs/tissues but generally affects the mediastinum. Occurrence of Castleman's disease in the pancreas in either form of the disease, the hyaline vascular or the plasma-cell type, is very rare, with only a few case reports in which the imaging findings were described. The MR imaging of pancreatic Castleman's disease has not been previously reported, to our knowledge. We submit the MRI findings in a patient with the plasma-cell-type of Castleman's disease, which presented as an isolated smoothly marginated pancreatic mass, hypointense on T1-weighted fat-suppressed images, isointense on T2-weighted sequences, and that after contrast material injection showed peripheral rim enhancement during the arterial phase.