Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 2021 Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Congress of South Africa (SA-CMR), taking place at the DoubleTree by Hilton Cape Town Upper Eastside from 20-21 November 2021. Following a successful historic joint meeting with the  SA Heart®, the Pan African Society of Cardiology (PASCAR), Africa PCR and the African Heart Network in Sandton in 2019, we are back in Cape Town this year for what will surely be an exciting festival of science and networking.

SA-CMR, which is now an important feature in the calendars of many with an interest in advanced cardiovascular imaging, is the only one of its kind on the African continent and brings together cardiologists, radiologists, radiographers, physicists, biomedical engineers and both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees. The meeting has endorsement from the South African Heart Association and the Radiological Society of South Africa (RSSA) and is held jointly under the auspices of the Cardiovascular Imaging Society of South Africa, a special interest group of the SA Heart®, and the South African Society for Cardiovascular Imaging, a special interest group of the RSSA. Further, the meeting also receives endorsement from the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR), the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), the European Association for Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), the Pan African Society for Cardiology and the African Society of Radiology. Local faculty will be supported by an international faculty, through the SA Heart®, RSSA, PASCAR, SCMR, ISMRM and EACVI.

The theme for this year’s meeting is ‘CMR for cardiovascular infections’. Talks and sessions related to this theme will be presented and led by experts throughout the meeting. As always, the SA-CMR will have a strong focus on conditions occurring commonly in the African context.

The congress will be supported by industry partners and I encourage you to visit the exhibition stands, which will highlight the latest developments in cardiology, radiology and cardiovascular imaging. 

I very much look forward to welcoming you to this meeting where you will engage with the science and other delegates from South Africa and beyond. 

Professor Ntobeko Ntusi

Director, Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Congress of South Africa