Correlation of Myocardial Photoscanning and Coronary Angiography in Angina Pectoris

With the availability and development of new radioisotopes and more sophisticated scanning instruments, the field of organ scanning has grown significantly. It is only logical that attempts would be made to visualize the heart and thus to study abnormalities of the myocardium. Blood pool scanning has been in use for a long time, but it does not differentiate between the volume of blood within the heart and the myocardial muscle itself. Myocardial scanning has been attempted with rubidium 86 (1) and chlormerodrin 203 (2). The high energy of the gamma emission from rubidium made it unsuitable for the study of myocardial disease in the human, and the studies with chlormerodrin 203 were only partially successful. Quinn et al. (3) investigated macroaggregated radioiodinated albumin, but this work has been done in animals only and has not been reported in humans. In February 1964, Carr et al. (4) reported on the detection of myocardial infarctions with cesium 131, which proved to be an almost ideal isotope for ...