Journal of Nuclear Medicine Supplement Explores Nuclear Cardiology

November 20, 2023

Reston, VA —A new supplement to The Journal of Nuclear Medicine seeks to highlight the exciting new developments and opportunities for nuclear cardiology in the modern era of personalized cardiovascular medicine. The supplement is intended both to educate and to serve as a stimulus for expansion of clinical efforts, adoption of novel techniques, and design of innovative research in this exciting field.

Although cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, treatment of the disease has improved in the past few decades. Effective management of acute and deadly manifestations, such as myocardial infarction, has increased survival rates. This has, in turn, led to an increase of patients living with chronic heart failure, posing a major challenge to the cardiovascular care of the future.

“The quest for biomarkers in personalized medicine presents an opportunity for noninvasive imaging,” said supplement guest editors Frank M. Bengel, director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany, and Marcelo F. Di Carli, chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. “The future vision is that modern cardiovascular imaging will have a profound role in providing highly effective biomarkers for personalized guidance of modern systems-based and targeted cardiovascular therapy.”

Articles in the supplement include:

• The Evolution of Cardiac Nuclear Imaging
  Frank M. Bengel and Marcelo F. Di Carli
  Bengel and Di Carli introduce this special issue of JNM on the current state of the art in cardiovascular molecular imaging and opportunities for future development.
• Future of Radionuclide Myocardial Perfusion Imaging: Transitioning from SPECT to PET
  Marcelo F. Di Carli
  Di Carli shows how absolute quantification, tracers with superior kinetic properties, and integration with CT promote a transition from SPECT to PET for myocardial perfusion imaging and will therefore refine the workup of ischemic heart disease.
• Quantitative Perfusion Imaging with Total-Body PET
  Juhani Knuuti, Jouni Tuisku, Henri Kärpijoki, Hidehiro Iida, Teemu Maaniitty, Aino Latva-Rasku, Vesa Oikonen, Sergey V. Nesterov, Jarmo Teuho, Maria K. Jaakkola, Riku Klén, Heli Louhi, Virva Saunavaara, Pirjo Nuutila, Antti Saraste, Juha Rinne and Lauri Nummenmaa
  Knuuti et al. show how the principle of quantitative blood flow imaging can be taken beyond the heart to look at total-body perfusion and systemic organ interaction, by use of novel PET systems with a large axial field of view.
• Molecular Imaging of Systemic and Cardiac Amyloidosis: Recent Advances and Focus on the Future
  Sharmila Dorbala and Marie Foley Kijewski
  Dorbala and Kijewski discuss molecular imaging of cardiac amyloidosis using amyloid PET tracers, including recent advances, with a focus on the future.
• Molecular Imaging Biomarkers in Cardiooncology: A View on Established Technologies and Future Perspectives
  David Kersting, Ilektra-Antonia Mavroeidi, Stephan Settelmeier, Robert Seifert, Martin Schuler, Ken Herrmann, Tienush Rassaf and Christoph Rischpler
  Kersting and colleagues provide insight into cancer therapies and their cardiotoxic potential, discuss underlying mechanisms, and introduce molecular imaging biomarkers for nuclear medicine physicians, oncologists, and cardiologists in the evolving field of nuclear cardiooncology.
• Imaging Inflammation Past, Present, and Future: Focus on Cardioimmunology
  James T. Thackeray, Kory J. Lavine and Yongjian Liu
  Thackeray, Lavine, and Liu describe the parallel evolution of therapeutic and imaging approaches targeting the immune system in cardiovascular disease and explore the potential for molecular imaging to refine and optimize therapeutic approaches.
• Myocardial Fibrosis: Emerging Target for Cardiac Molecular Imaging and Opportunity for Image-Guided Therapy
  Frank M. Bengel, Johanna Diekmann, Annika Hess and Michael Jerosch-Herold
  Bengel and colleagues highlight how improved mechanistic insights, novel specific treatments, and continued progress in noninvasive imaging will converge toward a future of image-guided, molecule-targeted antifibrotic therapy in cardiovascular medicine.
• Infection Imaging: Focus on New Tracers?
  Wolfgang Roll, Andreas Faust, Sven Hermann and Michael Schäfers
  Roll and colleagues focus on current advances in clinically approved [18F]FDG PET, with particular emphasis on the potential clinical need for new bacteria-specific tracers for the imaging of cardiovascular infections, and provide an overview of potential bacteria-specific targets and corresponding tracer candidates.

The JNM Molecular Imaging of Neurodegeneration Supplement is available at https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/64/Supplement_2.

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About JNM and the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging

The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) is the world’s leading nuclear medicine, molecular imaging and theranostics journal, accessed 15 million times each year by practitioners around the globe, providing them with the information they need to advance this rapidly expanding field. Current and past issues of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine can be found online at http://jnm.snmjournals.org.

JNM is published by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to advancing nuclear medicine and molecular imaging—precision medicine that allows diagnosis and treatment to be tailored to individual patients in order to achieve the best possible outcomes. For more information, visit www.snmmi.org.