Diagnosing coronary artery disease with hybrid PET/CT: it takes two to tango

Abstract

The noninvasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) is a challenging task. Although a large armamentarium of imaging modalities is available to evaluate the functional consequences of the extent and severity of CAD, cardiac perfusion positron emission tomography (PET) is considered the gold standard for this purpose. Alternatively, noninvasive anatomical imaging of coronary atherosclerosis with coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) has recently been successfully implemented in clinical practice. Although each of these diagnostic approaches has its own merits and caveats, functional and morphological imaging techniques provide fundamentally different insights into the disease process and should be considered to be complementary rather than overlapping. Hybrid imaging with PET/CT offers the possibility to evaluate both aspects nearly simultaneously, and studies have demonstrated that such a comprehensive assessment results in superior diagnostic accuracy, better prognostication, and helps in guiding clinical patient management. The aim of this review is to discuss the value of stand-alone CCTA and PET in CAD, and to summarize the available data on the surplus value of hybrid PET/CT including its strengths and limitations.