The future of molecular imaging in the clinic needs a clear strategy and a multidisciplinary effort.

Although advances in modern medicine do already and might provide even more new tools to prevent from life-threatening cardiovascular events in the future, the virtually unchanged high numbers of cardiovascular events suggest an unmet diagnostic challenge. Prevention of cardiovascular events, which are responsible for approximately 1/3 of all deaths in the industrialised societies, therefore needs new diagnostic tools, since current morphological and functional imaging approaches seem to fail in this respect.This article outlines the principle strategy and prerequisites to come up with a clinically relevant and successful molecular imaging technology in the future.