Cardiac PET/Computed Tomography Applications and Cardiovascular Outcome.

Cardiac PET/computed tomography (CT) in conjunction with different blood flow tracers is increasingly applied for the assessment of myocardial perfusion and myocardial flow reserve (MFR) in the detection of coronary artery disease (CAD). The ability of PET/CT to noninvasively determine regional myocardial blood flow at rest and during vasomotor stress allows the calculation of the MFR, which carries important prognostic information in patients with subclinical forms of cardiomyopathy. The measured MFR optimizes the identification and characterization of the extent and severity of CAD burden, and contributes to the flow-limiting effect of single lesions in multivessel CAD.