Pediatric Cardiac PET Imaging

Cardiac PET imaging can play a significant role in assessing and managing children with congenital and acquired heart disorders but remains largely underused for multiple reasons, not related to the accuracy or usefulness of the modality. Current work focusing on evaluation of cardiac innervation, cardiac receptor function and noninvasive cardiac gene therapy assessment with PET imaging has tremendous potential to revolutionize cardiac evaluation. Awareness and widespread availability of PET systems is expected to increase use of cardiac PET applications in the pediatric population. The advent of integrated PET/CT systems with advanced CT technology and the possible integrated PET/MR imaging systems opens even more promising future possibilities for cardiac evaluation in a one-stop approach.