What is 'cardiac nuclear medicine'?

What is 'cardiac nuclear medicine'?

Cardiac nuclear medicine is basically used to diagnose diseases of the heart. The two major areas of detection are what we call myocardial ischemia, and that is the shortage of the blood to the heart muscle in relation to coronary artery disease. The second major area is in the detection of myocardial viability. Those are areas of the heart muscle which are hibernating. They are not dead yet but they are hibernating, and they're not contracting. So we need to detect those areas of the heart so that we know if we need to restore the blood flow to those areas of the heart, so they come back and contract and contribute to normal cardiac function.