Myocardial viability assessment

Myocardial viability assessment

Myocardial viability assessment is done after a heart attack to see if the affected region of the heart has significant amount of viable myocardium. In that case opening up of blocked arteries to the region by angioplasty or bypass surgery will be beneficial. The gold standard for viability assessment has been positron emission tomography (PET), though of late MRI is becoming more and more used for viability assessment. Single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), another type of nuclear cardiology imaging is also useful in viability assessment.