Proceedings of the ASNC cardiac PET summit meeting, May 12 2014, Baltimore MD : 4. Novel applications of cardiovascular PET.

While it is well recognized that cardiac PET has the ability to accurately detect myocardial ischemia and coronary blood flow, there are multiple other novel and clinically important cardiac applications of PET which are now available for the evaluation of various disease processes of the cardiovascular system. Many of these applications utilize F18-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), a glucose analog which is retained within cells with a high metabolic activity and which has been used extensively in nuclear medicine to evaluate oncology patients and has recently also been used to evaluate infections. This review provides an overview of some of the clinically available novel applications, Figure 1, in cardiac PET which were discussed at the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology Cardiac PET Summit, May 12, 2014. Figure 1 Novel applications of cardiac PET.