32nd Balkan Medical Week 21-23 September 2012 Nis, Serbia The history of Nuclear Cardiology. D. Priftakis, A. Raptis, G. Gatsos, A. Kalkinis, A. Gika, M. Moktari, D. Andreopoulos, G. Tsoucalas. A.O.H.A. "The Saint Savvas", Nuclear medicine department, Athens, Greece. The history of nuclear cardiology originates in the late 1920s, when Hermann Blumgart used injectable solutions of radon gas and a Geiger counter to measure the “velocity of the circulation” in normal volunteers and patients with various diseases. Since then many radiotracers, instruments and techniques have been used for acquisition of quantitative information about cardiac function. Among the radioisotopes used in the early days of nuclear cardiology were 32P for labelling red blood cells by De Hevesy and 24Na by Prinzmetal in 1949. The introduction of 131I labelled albumin and Cassen's rectilinear scanner allowed Pritchard's first studies in cardiac physiology in 1952, while one year later, measurement of the flow in the coronary vessels was accomplished for the first time. Anger's gamma camera and the commercial development of 99mTc allowed the measurement of the ejection fraction and other parameters through radioisotope ventriculography, which was based on studies by Bonte and Curry in 1966 and was completed with the introduction of the “gating” technique by Mullins in 1969. Studies by D'Agostino in 1964 and by Shen and Jennings in 1972, led Bonte in the first use of 99mTc pyrophosphate for myocardial infarction imaging. In 1977, Pohost suggested the use of consecutive imaging after the administration of 201Tl during exercise for the differential diagnosis between myocardial infarction and scarring. Since then, the accumulation of clinical data through various studies and the introduction of SPECT and PET in everyday practice have increased the potential of nuclear cardiology in assessing the risk for heart diseases as well as the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Hermann Blumgart George de Hevesy Myron Prinzmetal Anger's gamma camera 99mTc pyrophosphate SPECT- PET scanner