In the heart of radiology, for valentine's day.

ove is everywhere. At the dawn of the 21st century, and especially for the forthcoming Valentine’s day, we thought it appropriate to give some time to the universal theme of love. We decided to review some very “love-ly” images (Figs. 1–9). The purpose is to describe and give an overview of several heart-shaped lesions or anatomic structures encountered during our daily radiologic practice. Because Paris is the capital of love and we French are very sentimental, we decided to share our work with you, hoping that you will find it as interesting and entertaining as we have. Over the past decade, we collected heartshaped images in all the departments in which we worked, accumulating approximately 20 cases. If there is one side effect inherent to some of the new and wonderful techniques that are available to us, it is unintentional discovery of oddly shaped lesions or images. Different techniques were used, from conventional radiography to sonography, CT, and MR imaging. Most areas of the body were reviewed, leaving no organ untouched. Our report indicates that screening for heartshaped images shows an excellent level of agreement, with near 100% interobserver reliability, probably potentiated by the fact that most of the authors are friends and colleagues. Curiosity and a taste for play were responsible for the high rate of detection. A strong correlation was observed between the rate of discovery and the radiologist’s mood of the day. All the techniques shown have the same accuracy, but some pictures were better defined with postprocessing techniques such as black–white inversion (Figs. 2D, 4C, and 6B) on CT images, or orientation (upside down) on sonographic images (Figs. 1B and 7D). The literature contains many anecdotal reports of heart-shaped images [1–4], but this article is the first, to our knowledge, that is devoted to the recognition of lovely heart-shaped forms in radiologic imaging. It is intended to acquaint the more-and-more-technical radiologist with the rare tradition of looking out for Cupid’s objects. Even if radiology requires a high level of attention and a serious attitude, incidental extraorganic objects such as heartshaped images may pop out on your screens and provide joy and distraction in your daily activity. Amusement is only a heartbeat away. As Welch [1] said, “Love is were you find it!” But as we French say, “L’amour, toujours l’amour!”