Multimodality cardiovascular molecular imaging: an overview.

A large, multidisciplinary symposium held at the National Institutes of Health in April and May 2009 brought together individuals from a wide range of scientific disciplines with the goal of promoting the nascent field of multimodality cardiovascular molecular imaging. This supplement to The Journal of Nuclear Medicine summarizes the presentations and discussions of that landmark symposium. The review articles not only present the state of the art of cardiovascular molecular imaging but also discuss opportunities and challenges the community will face in advancing cardiovascular molecular imaging to clinical practice. The use of molecular targets for imaging in preclinical models and the translation of these approaches to patients have become possible with the advent of several technologic advances reviewed in this supplement.