Noninvasive Assessment of Right Ventricular Function: Will There Be Resurgence in Radionuclide Imaging Techniques?

Right ventricular (RV) function is increasingly being recognized as an important prognostic marker in multiple cardiopulmonary disease states, including congestive heart failure, pulmonary arterial hypertension, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Accurate and reproducible measures of RV function, although technically challenging, are highly relevant in the clinical setting. Radionuclide techniques (eg, first-pass radionuclide angiography for quantifying RV systolic function) were developed nearly 40 years ago. More recently, MRI and transthoracic echocardiography have become the diagnostic imaging techniques of choice for the noninvasive evaluation of RV function. However, developments in single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET), and hybrid SPECT/CT and PET/CT systems have greatly improved the image quality and contrast resolution of radionuclide imaging of the heart, allowing for coregistered physiologic and anatomical information of the right ventricle in three dimensions. These improvements in cardiac imaging provide new opportunities for assessing RV myocardial perfusion, function, and anatomy in the same setting. Such imaging approaches may in the future provide assistance with proactive disease management, including early diagnosis of impending RV dysfunction in high-risk patients and for guiding decisions to initiate and/or modify treatments.