Dynamic SPECT imaging: exploring a new frontier in medical imaging

Over the last several years cardiac PET, MRI, CT, and ultrasound have made significant advances while very few new improvements in imaging hardware and radiopharmaceuticals have been realized for cardiac SPECT. Today, the dual-detector SPECT system is the most common imaging system used in nuclear cardiology, and /sup 201/Tl and /sup 99m/Tc-sestamibi are the most common used radiopharmaceuticals. Since no new radiotracers and hardware have been introduced for many years, new methods such as dynamic cardiac SPECT may offer the only potential to improve risk stratification in cases of moderate to mild coronary artery disease. Dynamic imaging could be performed on every cardiac SPECT procedure to provide improved lesion contrast and better evaluation of viable myocardium. However, there are challenges in the development of hardware, radiopharmaceuticals, and data processing techniques for dynamic cardiac SPECT to realize its full potential.