Magnetic resonance assessment of regional myocardial function is a novel potentially important tool for early identification of cardiac pathology. Many cardiac magnetic resonance techniques have been developed for detection and quantification of regional strain abnormalities including steady-state free-precession CINE, tagging, displacement encoding with stimulated echoes, strain encoding imaging, and feature tracking. Potential clinical applications of magnetic resonance strain imaging include early detection of systolic dysfunction in heart failure patients with both ischemic and nonischemic etiologies.