This Research Topic is part of the Insights in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine series. Following the success of the inaugural series, Frontiers has organized a series of Research Topics to highlight the latest advancements in research across the field of cardiovascular medicine, with articles from the members of our accomplished Editorial Boards. This editorial initiative of particular relevance, led by Professor Matteo Anselmino, Specialty Chief Editor of the Cardiac Rhythmology section, together with Dr. Hung-Fat Tse, is focused on new insights, novel developments, current challenges, latest discoveries, recent advances, and future perspectives in the field of cardiac rhythmology. The Research Topic solicits brief, forward-looking contributions from the editorial board members that describe the state of the art, outlining recent developments and major accomplishments that have been achieved and that need to occur to move the field forward. Authors are encouraged to identify the greatest challenges in the sub-disciplines, and how to address those challenges.

A practical guide to performing and analysing cardiovascular scans, this handbook is fully updated in this second edition. Containing a wealth of example scan images and detailed guidance on techniques and interpretations, this book is an invaluable workstation resource.

Mitral valve prolapse (MVP), consisting of an abnormal protrusion of mitral leaflets into the left atrium, is the main cause of severe mitral regurgitation and it often requires surgical or interventional correction. It mainly represents a typical adult disease with an average prevalence in industrialized countries ranging from 2 to 8%, but even the pediatric population may be affected showing specific features concerning both anatomy and treatment. Although its existence and clinical characteristics are known for several decades, every aspect of this pathological condition is in continuous evolution, being the subject of biologists’, cardiologists’ and surgeons’ active research. The aim of the present Research Topic is to address the MVP entity in its completeness, trying to describe all actual knowledge concerning molecular mechanisms, different clinical presentations (fibroelastic degeneration in elderly people or Barlow disease in young patients), diagnostic findings and tools (mainly represented by echocardiography and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), their specific application to newly developed transcatheter and minimally invasive treatments, indications, surgical management and interventional strategies. For all these big chapters, special attention will be addressed to show temporal knowledge evolution and new elements acquisition, since the central message is that MVP is in flux and far from full comprehension.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart: ACDC and MMWHS Challenges 2017, held in conjunction with MICCAI 2017, in Quebec, Canada, in September 2017. The 27 revised full workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics computational imaging and modelling of the heart, as well as statistical cardiac atlases. The topics of the workshop included: cardiac imaging and image processing, atlas construction, statistical modelling of cardiac function across different patient populations, cardiac computational physiology, model customization, atlas based functional analysis, ontological schemata for data and results, integrated functional and structural analyses, as well as the pre-clinical and clinical applicability of these methods. Besides regular contributing papers, additional efforts of STACOM workshop were also focused on two challenges: ACDC and MM-WHS.