Hybrid quantitative imaging: Will it enter clinical practice?

Excerpt

Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with either PET or SPECT is an important imaging modality for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD). More recently, CT angiography (CTA) has rapidly emerged as a potentially competitive method for evaluating patients with CAD. However, these techniques depict two different aspects of the disease. CTA examines the pathology of the coronary vessels (stenoses, plaques), while MPI allows assessment of blood perfusion in the left ventricle. Both modalities are routinely available for the evaluation of the cardiac patients. Sometimes they can be even available in a hybrid hardware configuration—equipment extensively used in the oncological field. In the last decade, there have been several reports of the synergistic value provided by the hybrid imaging (either by hybrid scanners or by fusion of standalone scans) in cardiology. Nevertheless, cardiac hybrid imaging has not yet entered routine clinical practice. …