Despite major advances in prevention and treatment of coronary atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease (CHD) remains a major cause of mortality and morbidity in the western world. Its management consumes a large proportion of national health care budgets, a significant part of which is spent in imaging technologies. Amongst them, myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) is an established technique with important applications in the overall management of CHD, including, diagnosis, prognostication, selection for revascularisation and assessment of acute coronary syndromes.

This supplement covers the current applications of MPI and also its cost effectiveness and use in clinical practice in the UK. In the first article, Loong and Anagnostopoulos perform a …