Practice of pediatric nuclear cardiology

Kensuke Karasawa
Department of Pediatrics and Child Health, Nihon University School of Medicine

Abstract
　　In pediatric cardiology, nuclear medicine is useful in diagnostic imaging due to the use of various tracers, the development of diagnostic software and the progress of the equipment. However, the appropriate stress testing, the choice of the most useful tracer, the imaging condition and characteristic diagnosis of the child have not been established, due to the small number of cases at each facility. Quantitative gated single-photon emission computed tomography（QGS）, which performs the kinetic analysis of cardiac function, 123I Metaiodobenzylguanigine（MIBG）, and 123I betamethyl-iodophenyl-pentadecanoic acid（BMIPP）imaging are used for clinical diagnosis in pediatric nuclear cardiology. Nuclear cardiology in children is a clinical diagnostic method using the appropriate tracer and imaging protocol in consideration of the image quality and irradiation exposure. Especially, for the severity and prognosis of coronary artery lesions in Kawasaki disease, it is a less invasive diagnostic method. As a precaution, the diagnostic imaging should take into account the characteristic artifacts of the child（such as body movement, small heart and the contiguity of accumulation in the liver）. For the clinical diagnosis, the evaluation of the image data for single photon emission computed tomography（SPECT）reconstruction is always necessary.

Keywords： Nuclear cardiology, Myocardial perfusion imaging, Kawasaki disease