Myocardial imaging for mitochondrial membrane potential.

c p p r p q m Rest and stress myocardial perfusion imaging, described nearly 4 decades ago (1), is now performed in 9 million people annually in the United States (2). The procedure provides clinically useful data regardless of whether the tracer is a monovalent cation such as potassium, thallium, or rubidium; a highly diffusible agent such as O-labeled water; an amino acid precursor such as ammonia; or a lipophilic agent such as sestamibi or tetrofosmin. All of the radiopharmaceuticals proposed to measure myocardial perfusion, regardless of their chemical composition, mechanism of uptake, or mechanism of myocardial retention, follow the Sapirstein principle.