|
|
||||||||
Continuing Education |
1 Division of Nuclear Medicine/PET, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; 2 Division of Cardiovascular Imaging, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and 3 Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Correspondence: For correspondence or reprints contact: Marcelo F. Di Carli, MD, Division of Nuclear Medicine/PET, Brigham and Women's Hospital, 75 Francis St., Boston, MA 02115. E-mail: mdicarli{at}partners.org
The field of nuclear cardiology is witnessing growing interest in the use of cardiac PET for the evaluation of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). The available evidence suggests that myocardial perfusion PET provides an accurate means for diagnosing obstructive CAD, which appears superior to SPECT especially in the obese and in those undergoing pharmacologic stress. The ability to record changes in left ventricular function from rest to peak stress and to quantify myocardial perfusion (in mL/min/g of tissue) provides an added advantage over SPECT for evaluating multivessel CAD. There is growing and consistent evidence that gated myocardial perfusion PET also provides clinically useful risk stratification. Although the introduction of hybrid PET/CT technology offers the exciting possibility of assessing the extent of anatomic CAD (CT coronary angiography) and its functional consequences (ischemic burden) in the same setting, there are technical challenges in the implementation of CT-based transmission imaging for attenuation correction. Nonetheless, this integrated platform for assessing anatomy and biology offers a great potential for translating advances in molecularly targeted imaging into humans.
Key Words: myocardial perfusion imaging PET/CT CT angiography cardiac PET
* NOTE: FOR CE CREDIT, YOU CAN ACCESS THIS ACTIVITY THROUGH THE SNM WEB SITE (http://www.snm.org/ce_online) THROUGH MAY 2008.
Marcelo F. Di Carli reports having an affiliation with GE Healthcare, Bracco Diagnostics, BristolMyers Squibb Imaging, Siemens Medical Solutions, and Astellas Pharma US, Inc. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
COPYRIGHT © 2007 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Inc.
Related articles in JNM:
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
T. M. Bateman Business Aspects of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography: Tackling the Challenges J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. Img., January 1, 2008; 1(1): 111 - 118. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MEDICINE TECHNOLOGY | THE JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MEDICINE |