Application advances of simultaneous PET/MR imaging in cardiovascular disease

Simultaneous PET/MR imaging is a novel multimodality imaging approach that can assess disease activity together with assessment of cardiac anatomy, function, and tissue composition during a single scan. Cardiac PET/MR imaging has the potential in the diagnosis and assessment of myocardial ischemia, viability, inflammation, cardiac sarcoidosis, cardiac amyloidosis, cardiac tumors and atherosclerotic plaque imaging. This review summarizes the most promising applications of PET/MR in the cardiovascular field. The combination of various radiotracers and multi-parametric imaging with PET/MR will have a bright future in the research of cardiovascular diseases. (authors)