Imaging investigations in infective endocarditis: current approach and perspectives.

Infective endocarditis is a serious disease that needs rapid diagnosis and accurate risk stratification to offer the best therapeutic strategy. Echocardiography plays a key role in the management of the disease but may be limited in some clinical situations. Moreover, this method is insensitive for very early detection of the infection and assessment of therapeutic response because it does not provide imaging at the molecular and cellular levels. Recently, several novel morphological, molecular and hybrid imaging modalities have been investigated in infective endocarditis and offer new perspectives for better management of the disease.