In recent years there have been tremendous advances in cardiac imaging techniques covering the complete spectrum from echocardiography, nuclear cardiology, magnetic resonance imaging to contrast angiography. With respect to these noninvasive and invasive cardiac imaging modalities, marked technological developments have allowed the cardiologist to visualize the myocardium in a far more refined manner than conventional imaging was capable of. Echocardiography has extended its domain with intravascular ultrasound, cardiovascular nuclear imaging has added positron emission tomography to its line...

In the past few years it has become clear that left ventricular dysfunction, even of severe degree, may be reversible after coronary revascularization in some patients. As a result, myocardial viability has captured the imagination of researchers and clinicians seeking to unravel the cellular and subcellular mechanisms and define appropriate diagnostic modalities. These diagnostic modalities include: cardiac catheterization, positron-emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, two-dimensional echocardiography and single-photon imaging. This book, for the first time, brings together a...

Since the introduction of myocardial perfusion imaging and radionuclide angiography in the mid-seventies, cardiovascular nuclear medicine has undergone an explosive growth. The use of nuclear cardiology techniques has become one of the cornerstones of the noninvasive assessment of coronary artery disease. In the past 15 years major steps have been made from visual analysis to quantitative analysis, from planar imaging to tomographic imaging, from detection of disease to prognosis, and from separate evaluations of perfusion, metabolism, and function to an integrated assessment of myocardial...

In recent years there have been major advances in the fields of cardiovascular nuclear medicine and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. In nuclear cardiology more adequate tomographic systems have been designed for routine cardiac use, as well as new or improved quantitative analytic software packages both for planar and tomographic studies implemented on modern state-of-the-art workstations. In addition, artificial intelligence techniques are being applied to these images in attempts to interpret the nuclear studies in a more objective and reproducible manner. Various new radiotracers have...

It is with pleasure that I write this foreword for the book "Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Coronary Artery Disease," edited by Dr. van der Wall and Dr. de Roos. I am pleased for two reasons. Firstly, as chairman of the Scientific Board of the Interuniversity Cardiology Institute of the Netherlands (ICIN), because ever since the technique became available for use in medicine and biology our Institute has tried and succeeded to promote the introduction and dev- opment of magnetic resonance imaging in cardiology in the Netherlands. ICIN was the first cardiological institute on the European...

AMI E. ISKANDRIAN & ERNST E. VAN DER WALL The first edition of this book was published in 1994. Since then important advances have occurred in the field of myocardial viability. This, coupled with increasing interest by the scientific community in the broader issues of its relevance to patient care, suggested to us the need to write the second edition. We are most fortunate to have the help of a distinguished group of experts who have helped shape the field; we appreciate their commitments and contributions. Almost all chapters have been radically modified. Chapter 1 deals with...

What's New in Cardiovascular Imaging is a bibliographical "image" of a Symposium held June 22-24, 1998 in Leiden, the Netherlands. At this Symposium all the major advances in car- diovascular imaging in all the cardiovascular imaging modalities (X-ray, (intravascular) ultra- sound, magnetic resonance, scintigraphy and CT) were addressed by the leading authorities in this field. Based on the presentations of the invited Faculty, this book consists of a compi- lation of manuscripts related to most of the topics discussed at this particular meeting. We express our gratitude to all authors and...

F.J.Th. WACKERS Metabolic imaging: The future of cardiovascular nuclear imaging? Since cardiovascular nuclear imaging emerged as a new subspecialty in the mid-1970s, the field has gone through an explosive growth. Radionuclide techniques became readily recognized as important new diagnostic aids in the armamentarium of the clinical cardiologist. Initially, cardiovascular nuclear imaging focused on static myocardial imaging using either thallium-201 or technetium-99m-pyrophosphate for diagnosing acute myocardial infarction. Shortly thereafter, multigated equilibrium radionuclide...

Myocardial viability has become one of the most important issues in clinical cardiology. In particular, absence or presence of viability may be decisive in patient management, and the decision to perform angioplasty (PTCA) or bypass surgery (CABG) is frequently based on the accurate assessment of viability. Although echocardiography and conventional nuclear medicine techniques may provide valuable information on viability, positron emission tomography (PET) is currently considered to be the gold standard for the assessment of myocardial viability. The simultaneous evaluation of myocardial...