Almost 50 years have passed since Blumgart and Weiss first used a cloud chamber to follow a radium salt solution through a patient's heart (1). Extensive advances in the technology of the detectors, data analysis systems, and tracers used have resulted in greatly expanded applications of radioisotopes to the assessment of cardiac function and disease. The development of nuclear cardiology has proceeded along four lines: 1) radionuclide angiography, 2) myocardial perfusion imaging, 3) intracoronary microsphere imaging, and 4) regional myocardial blood flow determination using inert gases.
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