Cardiac PET Imaging for Coronary Artery Disease and Heart Failure: An Overview.

Cardiac PET imaging is an important noninvasive modality for the diagnosis and management of heart failure. Cardiac PET myocardial perfusion imaging can identify coronary artery disease with high accuracy and also detect myocardial viability, offering crucial information for the treatment of ischemic cardiomyopathy. Additionally, cardiac PET can help diagnose nonischemic cardiomyopathies including sarcoidosis, amyloidosis, and myocarditis. Improved PET scanner technology combined with emerging radiotracers will, in the future, offer disease-specific molecular imaging that will further assist in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment selection for a variety of cardiovascular pathologies.