This prospective study evaluated magnetocardiography (MCG) as a screening tool for cardiomyopathy (CM) in 110 adults with angina-like symptoms after exclusion of coronary artery disease, compared against advanced imaging and/or endomyocardial biopsy, with 220 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (total N=330).
MCG detected CM with 94.74% sensitivity (95% CI: 85%–99%), 98.54% specificity (95% CI: 96%–100%), 93.1% NPV, and 94.34% PPV. In 3 patients where cardiac MRI missed CM, MCG findings matched endomyocardial biopsy results. Reproducibility was high (statistical uncertainty: 2.5%).
Single-center prospective study with a relatively small patient cohort (n=110 suspected CM cases); control subjects were incorporated retrospectively via matching rather than prospectively enrolled; the MCG score threshold was derived from prior retrospective work by the same group, raising the risk of optimistic performance estimates.
MCG may serve as a rapid, noninvasive first-pass screen for cardiomyopathy after ruling out ischemic disease — potentially guiding which patients warrant advanced imaging like cardiac MRI. Clinicians should note this is early-phase evidence; independent validation in larger, multi-center cohorts is needed before broad adoption.
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