Preface

Welcome to the third edition of Nuclear Cardiology: Practical Applications. This third edition reflects a substantial revision of our first two editions. A greatly expanded section on PET imaging is now present and additional chapters have been added to enhance many of the basic principles of nuclear cardiology, including radiopharmaceuticals, instrumentation, quality imaging, and radiation exposure. Most chapters have been reorganized and several topics combined to provide maximum understanding and clarity. Throughout the book, focus is placed on the clinical applications of imaging technology and a separate chapter on the appropriate use of radionuclide imaging has been added. Once again, this text features considerable graphic content and case illustrations.

Although this book is primarily intended to be practical and clinically useful, we have included chapters that delve in greater detail into the procedural aspects of contemporary nuclear cardiology. Chapters dealing with clinical disease states and the use of radionuclide cardiac imaging focus on diagnosis and risk stratification of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease, evaluation of therapy, acute chest pain, and heart failure are all revised. This edition also presents newer and emerging techniques in nuclear cardiology, which are currently available or are anticipated shortly, such as neurohumoral imaging, the use of hybrid technology, and cardiac inflammatory and infection imaging. Alternative cardiac imaging modalities are presented in extensively revised chapters in order to provide a perspective of the role of nuclear cardiology in patient management in relation to other options.

While this textbook is useful for all practitioners of nuclear cardiology and for health care providers who refer for these procedures, we believe that it is ideally suited for trainees, including cardiology fellows and radiology residents who seek information that is easy to understand and readily usable. In addition, the book should be useful for examination review. To this end, we have included more than 100 questions to aid in board review preparation, with the in-depth answers and explanations.

We thank our many colleagues who have provided vital material for this book, which will once again allow Nuclear Cardiology: Practical Applications to be critically important for readers and one of the most useful educational products in the field of cardiac imaging. As authors and editors, we are proud of our offering and we hope that our readers find true value in this book for optimizing the clinical practice of nuclear cardiology.