Prospects of nuclear medicine for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases

This article describes main research directions of nuclear cardiology in the world and in Russia. The distinctive feature of nuclear cardiology is functionality of the techniques. Without providing a high spatial resolution, scintigrams reflect physiological and pathophysiological changes occurring in the body. This work mainly focuses on the characteristics of trends in modern nuclear medicine and cardiology. These trends comprise the development of new radiodiagnostic agents; studies of the processes of impaired myocardial blood perfusion, innervation, and metabolism; development of the methods for verification of inflammatory processes in the heart; generation of new approaches for prediction of the results of hightech interventional treatment and cardiac surgery; and the studies of relationships between the abnormalities of the heart and other organs (brain, lungs, kidneys, etc.).