Cardiac software repeatability beyond correlations: Clinical outcomes matter

Excerpt

One of the unique features of nuclear cardiology is its ability to image cardiac sympathetic innervation and denervation, both with MIBG planar scintigraphy or SPECT and with PET using ¹¹C-hydroxyephedrine (HED). Ischemic or infarcted myocardial tissue may result in denervation and the area of denervation has been linked to the area at risk in acute ischemic injury.1 Denervated myocardium in turn creates a substrate that is sensitive to arrhythmic triggers which may lead to sudden cardiac death.2 This has formed the rationale behind imaging of myocardial innervation as prognostic marker in coronary artery disease and heart failure. Indeed, both global levels of MIBG3 and ¹¹C-HED4 and regional abnormalities5,6 have been shown to be associated with adverse events in a variety of cardiac diseases. …