Nuclear Cardiology

General Information

Clinical YNHH Fax:	Contact Phone: 203-688-4749 Fax: 203-688-3658
Research Yale Translational Imaging Center	Contact Phone: 203-785-5005

Yale Nuclear Cardiology laboratories are located at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The staff includes 6 full time clinical faculty in Nuclear Cardiology, computer scientist and medical physicist, senior fellows in Nuclear Cardiology, and a team of nuclear medicine technologists, physician assistants, nurses and exercise physiologists. Nuclear Cardiology has representation from the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and Imaging Sciences.

Laboratories and Centers

The Cardiovascular Nuclear Imaging and Exercise Laboratories at Yale comprise a comprehensive exercise and imaging center that is fully accredited by the Intersocietal Commission for Accreditation of Nuclear laboratories (ICANL) for SPECT/CT, PET/CT and equilibrium blood pool imaging. The laboratory performs cardiac perfusion and function studies, utilizing state-of-the-art SPECT and PET, and planar imaging equipment. Both Thallium-201 and Technetium-99m labeled SPECT tracers and Rubidium-82 and 18F-deoxyglucose (FDG) PET imaging agents are used daily in conjunction with physical and pharmacological stress testing for detection and risk stratification of patients with suspected ischemic heart disease and heart failure.

The laboratory offers many new services including; evaluation of cardiac sarcoidosis and amyloidosis, peripheral arterial disease, microvascular disease, chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity, and sympathetic imaging of the heart for risk stratification of patients with heart failure. Static and ECG-gated tomographic and planar images are interpreted both visually and with commercially available quantitative software developed and validated in our laboratory. We routinely provide analysis of quantitative myocardial flow and flow reserve with dynamic Rubidium-82 PET imaging.

In addition, the laboratory provides Yale-New Haven Hospital Emergency Department Chest Pain Center with complete stress testing capabilities including SPECT imaging. The laboratory is fully digital and networked. All imaging studies are digitally archived. The laboratory has unique logistics in place for remote internet reading of clinical studies through a dedicated Yale Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory web site.

The laboratory at Yale perform over 7,000 clinically requested studies in outpatients and in-patients. Most studies are performed in conjunction with either physical or pharmacological stress testing. The laboratory performs the following stress modalities: physical treadmill/bicycle exercise, pharmacologic vasodilation with either regadenoson or adenosine, pharmacologic stress with dobutamine, and exercise cardiopulmonary testing.

Clinical Trails

The Yale laboratory has served as the Core Laboratory for many multi-center clinical trials. The VA laboratory is also active in clinical research projects. In addition, research laboratories dedicated to multi-modality and molecular imaging are located within the Yale Translational Research Imaging Center and on the VA campus.

Research Direction

• Advanced cardiovascular and molecular imaging
• Cardiac metabolism in the setting of ischemia
• Computer Quantification
• Heart Disease
• Myocardial Perfusion
• Radionuclide Imaging
• Ventricular Function
• Diabetes

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