Clinical cardiac positron emission tomography: state of the art.

Cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) has evolved rapidly from a relatively esoteric research tool into clinical applications providing unique, quantitative information on myocardial perfusion, metabolism, and cell membrane function and having a potentially significant impact on cardiovascular medicine. Although there are many different positron radionuclides for imaging diverse myocardial behavior, three radionuclides have reached accepted clinical utility. Cardiac PET using nitrogen-13-ammonia, rubidium-82, and fluoro-18-deoxyglucose has proved accurate and definitive in multiple university and private-practice sites for diagnosing and assessing severity and location of coronary artery disease in symptomatic or asymptomatic patients, for identifying injured but viable myocardium potentially salvageable by revascularization, and for ruling out clinically significant coronary artery stenosis with a high specificity in patients who might otherwise undergo coronary arteriography to document the absence of significant disease.