What can functional imaging do for cardiology?

摘要

The assessment of patients with cardiac diseases represents approximately 30% of the activity within nuclear medicine departments, and patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) constitute the largest proportion of such throughput. This level of activity, reached over approximately twenty-five years, is the result of stimulating continuous developments of instrumentation and tracers. The most popular clinical applications of nuclear medicine in cardiology include the detection of the presence and extent of disease for risk stratification and prognosis, the preoperative assessment of tissue viability in patients waiting to undergo revascular-ization, and the follow-up of patients undergoing medical therapy and those who have undergone revascularization.