The goal of this investigation is to establish the safety and efficacy of rest-stress (pharmacologic) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging using 62Cu-Copper Pyruvaldehyde Thiosemicarbazone (62Cu-PTSM) in a group of normal volunteers and in a group of patients with coronary artery disease. Positron emission tomography is a quantitative method of assessing myocardial perfusion and has been shown with tracers such as 82Rubidium (82Rb) or 13N-ammonia to be an accurate method for clinically identifying and assessing severity of coronary artery disease by perfusion imaging. As 82Rb is only indicated for resting perfusion imaging and 13N-ammonia has not undergone FDA evaluation; there is currently no PET agent approved for stress perfusion imaging in the setting of coronary artery disease. We propose the use of the readily available 62Zn/62Cu generator as a source of radiotracer for perfusion imaging. Human PET studies with 62Cu-PTSM have shown that this tracer provides high quality images of the heart at rest and at stress along with the ability to qualitatively and quantitatively map the pattern of myocardial perfusion. In this study, rest-stress measurements will be used to detect reversible myocardial perfusion defects.
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