Spatial and Temporal Heterogeneity of Regional Myocardial Uptake in Patients Without Heart Disease Under Fasting Conditions on Repeated Whole-Body 18F-FDG PET/CT

Imaging of cardiac 18F-FDG uptake is used in the diagnostic evaluation of residual viablemyocardium. Although, originally, hi-bernating myocardium was identified by a mismatch between perfusion defect and relatively preserved 18F-FDG uptake, at present several studies propose that 18F-FDG distribution can also be used alone for this purpose. Nevertheless, even severe myocardial 18F-FDG uptake defects are frequently observed in cancer patients without any cardiac disease. The aim of this study was to retrospectively analyze global and regional 18F-FDG cardiac images of 49 consecutive cancer patients free of cardiac diseases who submitted to 3 PET scans under fasting conditions.Methods: Images were acquired with a high-resolu-tion PET/CT scanner. Three-dimensional regions of interest were drawn on the fused PET/CT images to measure the maximal standardized uptake value of the left ventricular myocardiu