Cardiovascular imaging

In recent years, numerous imaging modalities have been developed to diagnose cardiac disease noninvasively and to measure structural, functional, and biochemical performance of cardiac tissue. Especially, applications of imaging procedures to assess myocardial perfusion under rest and stress condition have substantially added to noninvasive diagnosis and assessment of prognosis in patients with suspected and documented coronary artery disease. With the advent of cardiac MR, high-resolution structural and functional imaging has become available. Biochemical and molecular tissue characterization with specific radiotracers has been enabled by the introduction of single photon emission computed tomography and positron emission tomography (PET). Driven by rapid acceptance of PET/CT in patients with oncological diseases, hybrid imaging systems have been developed to promote noninvasive multimodality characterization of disease processes. PET/CT has become a routine imaging procedure in oncology, while PET/MR plays an increasing clinical role in neuroimaging combining anatomic and functional measurements. Cardiac patients also benefitted from multimodality approaches such as PET/CT. PET/CT offers the integrated assessment of regional myocardial perfusion as well as coronary anatomy linking functional measurements with accurate delineation of individual vessel anatomy. This combined approach does not only optimize sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic process, but also guides the therapeutic approach of selective revascularization in patients with advanced disease.