Coronary heart disease and stroke are leading causes of mortality for men and women in the United States. Current understanding of the pathogenesis of and the risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) is derived largely from prospective studies of clinically overt disease. Unfortunately, clinical risk factors for CVD defined by these methods fail to predict a large proportion of CVD events, and some subjects at high clinical risk fail to develop overt disease. Subclinical disease precedes clinical by years/decades but is difficult to quantify. For example, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and aortic atherosclerosis are strong predictors of CVD events, but are difficult to accurately non-invasively quantify, especially among the elderly and overweight subjects (both growing populations in the U.S.). MRI permits accurate assessment of cardiac anatomy/function and subclinical aortic atherosclerosis.