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This book first appeared in 1993; the preceding third edition was published in 2005. Each new edition has
been associated with significant expansion, revision, and updating, as well as significant changes in orientation
that reflect new advances in the field. At the time of this fourth edition, nuclear cardiology is firmly established
as a key noninvasive modality for the clinical evaluation of patients with cardiovascular disease. Concomitantly, there have been further advances in instrumentation, radiopharmaceutical development, and new clinical research, leading to additional understanding of clinical utility, cost-effectiveness, appropriateness, and relationship of imaging findings to patient outcomes. Nuclear cardiology has been incorporated into major large multicenter clinical trials. In addition, as other modes of cardiovascular imaging have approached maturity, there has been movement toward integrating the various imaging modalities under the broad umbrella of cardiovascular multimodality imaging. The cardiovascular imager of the future will likely be trained in more than one modality and will be housed in dedicated imaging centers that offer a variety of imaging approaches. It will be the imager’s job to determine the study most appropriate for answering the posed clinical question. In recognition of this trend, new chapters are included in this edition that provide additional focus on non-nuclear cardiovascular imaging modalities such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and contrast echocardiography. The fourth edition continues to focus on nuclear cardiology and represents a major effort to incorporate new advances in clinical nuclear cardiology, thereby
providing a road map for up-to-date clinical use. In addition, we seek to point out the new directions in which nuclear cardiology as well as integrated cardiovascular imaging are headed. Our goals in the fourth edition continue to be twofold: first, to present the most up-to-date and comprehensive clinically applicable data available in the field, thereby offering both the practitioner and student/trainee the current clinical state of the art; and second, to present the newest andmost exciting directions in the field that reflect both technologic and biological advances. To meet these combined goals, the book has once again expanded—now to a total of 45 chapters— and also includes a totally new and expanded atlas of case presentations to provide concrete examples of the clinical relevance of nuclear cardiology.
