Planar Thallium-201 Scintigraphy

The last ten years have seen a revolution in methods of cardiac noninvasive imaging techniques. Scintigraphic methods have been applied widely, impacting on the diagnosis and evaluation of all forms of cardiac illness and integrated into the cardiac practice. Since 1975 thallium-201 has been widely employed as a radionuclide agent for the assessment of regional myocardial perfusion. Quantitative analysis of planar thallium scintigraphy provides a high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of CAD. In addition planar thallium-201 imaging provides very important prognostic information in different clinical situations. Although single platon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) has some theoretical advantages over phonar imaging, the suboptimal specificity of SPECT thallium-201 imaging is a major practical problem. High quality planar thallium- 201 imaging still has an important role in clinical cardiology today.