Assessment of Heart

The primary treatment for patients determined to have severe aortic or mitral regurgitation is surgical repair or replacement their valves. The most commonly used tool to quantify the severity mitral and aortic regurgitation is echocardiography. Studies have shown that echocardiography may have significant limitations in quantifying regurgitant volume. MRI has recently been shown to easily and reproducibly quantify regurgitation. To better understand how to accurately quantify severity of regurgitation the investigators propose this study with the following aims: 1) compare MRI to echocardiography in the evaluation of regurgitant volume in patients with aortic or mitral regurgitation and 2) to assess which technique is better at predicting the response of the left ventricle to valve surgery.