• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.179-195
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• 2009

Scince $^{201}$TI was introduced as a myocardial perfusion imaging agent in the early 1970s, scintigraphic evaluation of myocardial perfusion for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease is a valuable noninvasive diagnostic imaging modality. Stress radionuclide myocardial perfusion imaging is widely accepted to have high diagnostic and prognostic use in the assessment of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. With wise use of this nonivasive imaging technique, more patients are referred for stress perfusion imaging. Until now various protocols for stress testing and myocardial imaging were developed and used in worldwide. This article presented various protocols of stress testing and myocardial imaging for clinical use.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.196-202
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• 2009

Myocardial perfusion scintigraphy is currently by far the most commonly performed cardiac nuclear study, constituting approximately one third of all nuclear medicine procedure. It plays an important role in the diagnosis, prognosis, risk assessment and management of heart disease. Aim of this review is to describe recent evolution of myocardial perfusion imaging on the focus of diagnosis of coronary artery disease. In addition, current status of other imaging modalities will be reviewed.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 1998

Gated myocardial SPECT and attenuation correction gave birth to new insights into the pathophysiology of ischemic myocardial perfusion and function in clinical routine practice. Gated myocardial Tc-99m-compound SPECT improved diagnostic accuracy of coronary artery disease and enabled us to observe motion and thickening of myocardial walls as well as myocardial perfusion at the same time. Quantitative and qualitative assessment of myocardial performance and perfusion let us to understand the myocardial physiology in ischemia and infarction. In every patient who underwent gated perfusion SPECT, we will find ejection fraction, left ventricular volumes and regional wall motion. There are hopes to use gated TI-201 SPECT for the same purpose and to use gated SPECT for evaluation of wall motion and thickening at stress or immediate post-stress. Attenuation correction could improve diagnostic accuracy mainly by increasing normalcy ratio or performance of non-expert physicians. Both gated methods and attenuation correction improved specificity of non-expert physicians in diagnosing patients with moderate pretest likelihood. New imaging techniques will fill the desire of cardiologists to examine function and perfusion, and possibly metabolism in their clinical routine practice.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.207-218
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• 2003

Myocardial perfusion imaging has been increasingly used to provide prognostic data and guidance on the choice of appropriate management of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. The electrocardiogram gated myocardial SPECT program is corning into wide use with an advent of $^{99m}Tc-labeled$ tracers and an improvement of SPECT machines. The gated technique permits measurement of important cardiac prognostic indicators without any further discomforts or radiation burden in patients underwent standard myocardial perfusion SPECT. In addition, gated study significantly improves diagnostic yield by reducing the number of borderline interpretations and could find myocardial stunning and viable myocardium. Gated single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging allows the automated calculation of end-diastolic volume, end-systolic volume, ejection fraction, myocardial mass and the assessment of regional wall motion and thickening, and it have dramatically improved assessment of coronary artery disease in routine nuclear practice. This allows the simultaneous assessment of both perfusion and function within the same acquisition, and serves as a cost-effective technique for providing more diagnostic data with fewer diagnostic tests. Because the diagnostic and prognostic power derived from knowledge of left ventricular function can be added to that provided by assessing myocardial perfusion, gated SPECT imaging has rapidly gained widespread acceptance and is now used on a routine clinical basis in a growing number of laboratories, including South Korea. The gated SPECT technique for measurement of left ventricular parameters has been validated against a variety of well established techniques. In this work, overview of gated myocardial perfusion SPECT focus on functional parameters is presented.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.207-214
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• 2009

Positron emission tomogrpahy (PET) represents the most advanced scintigraphic imaging technology. With the increase in availability of PET, the clinical use of PET has grown in medical fields. This can be employed for cardiovascular research as well as for clinical applications in patients with various cardiovascular disease. PET allows non-invasive functional assessment of myocardial perfusion, substrate metabolism and cardiac innervation and receptors as well as gene expression in vivo. PET is regarded as the gold standard for the detection of myocardial viability, and it is the only method available for the quantitative assessment of myocardial blood flow. This review focuses on the clinical applications of myocardial perfusion PET in coronary artery disease.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.174-178
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• 2009

Many radiopharmaceuticals have been developed and wildy used in the imaging cardiac function. Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) is a well established noninvasive method of assessing coronary blood flow and has been widely used in patients diagnosed or suspected with coronary artery diseases. The innovation of radiopharmaceuticals used in the cardiac imaging is one of the most important contributors to the development of nuclear cardiology. Thallium-201 and various technetium-99m agents have been globally used for myocardial perfusion SPEG, and N-13 ammonia (13NH3), rubidium-82 (82Rb), 0-15 water (H2150) for myocardial perfusion PET. As well as the cardiac perfusion studies, new radiopharmaceuticals that visualize fat metabolism or receptors of the sympathetic nervous system have successfully been applied to clinical practice. Useful information can be obtained for diagnosing coronary artery disease, evaluating patients' condition, or assessing therapeutic effects. In this review, we describe the characteristics and clinical usefulness of radiopharmaceuticals used for cardiac SPEG and PET.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.165-173
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• 2009

Nuclear cardiology in Korea is less active, compared to nuclear oncology, but it has been specialized and ramified. Lately, sophisticated nuclear cardiac imaging methods provide more convenience for patients. It is necessary to accurately estimate the recent progress in the imaging devices for nuclear cardiology. Myocardial perfusion imaging is a well established study to evaluate heart function. Myocardial perfusion SPECT and PET have been used for assessment of coronary artery disease with various radiopharmaceuticals. And of late, the development of advanced imaging devices - multi-pinhole technique and high definition imaging technique - and software made the scanning time shorter and expanded the application field. Therefore, it is required to review the nuclear cardiology hardware/software for the clinical practice and research. In this review, the characteristics about recently-developed SPECT/PET and software for nuclear cardiology are described. It is hoped that this information would contribute to improving the activity of nuclear cardiac research in Korea where the research for the fusion imaging combining a and nuclear imaging is drawing more attention.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.215-221
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• 2009

Nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging is very effective in the evaluation of patients with suspicious acute coronary syndrome (ACS), for adequate diagnosis and treatment. There have been many clinical evidences to support the efficacy and cost-effectiveness. In addition, many authoritative guidelines support the utility of myocardial perfusion imaging in ACS with an appropriate diagnostic protocol. However, with the development of other cardiac imaging modalities, the choice of modality for the diagnosis of suspicious ACS now depends on the availability of each modality in each institute. Newly developed imaging technologies, especially including molecular imaging, are expected to have great potential not only for diagnosis but also for primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of ACS.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 2005

Pharmacologic stress testing for myocardial perfusion imaging is a widely used noninvasive method for the evaluation of known or suspected coronary artery disease. The use of exercise for cardiac stress has been practiced for over 60 years and clinicians are familial with its using. However, there are inevitabe situations in which exorcise stress is inappropriate. A large number of patients with cardiac problems are unable to exercise to their full potential due to comorbidity such as osteoarthritis, vascular disease and pulmonary disease and a standard exercise stress test for myocardial perfusion imaging is suboptimal means for assessment of coronary artery disease. This problem has led to the development of the pharmacologic stress test and to a great increase in its popularity. All of the currently used pharmacologic agents have well-documented diagnostic value. This review deals the physiological actions, clinical protocols, safety, nuclear imaging applications of currently available stress agents and future development of new vasodilating agents.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2007

The obstacles for cardiac imaging are motion artifacts due to cardiac motion, respiration, and blood flow, and low signal due to small tissue volume of heart. To overcome these obstacles, fast imaging technique with ECG gating is utilized. Cardiac exam using MRI comprises of morphology, ventricular function, myocardial perfusion, metabolism, and coronary artery morphology. During cardiac morphology evaluation, double and triple inversion recovery techniques are used to depict myocardial fluidity and soft tissue structure such as fat tissue, respectively. By checking the first-pass enhancement of myocardium using contrast-enhanced fast gradient echo technique, myocardial blood flow can be evaluated. In addition, delayed imaging in 10 - 15 minutes can inform myocardial destruction such as chronic myocardial infarction. Ventricular function including regional and global wall motion can be checked by fast gradient echo cine imaging in quantitative way. MRI is acknowledged to be practical for integrated cardiac evaluation technique except coronary angiography. Especially delay imaging is the greatest merit of MRI in myocardial viability evaluation.