The Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory at Hartford Hospital performs over 2,300 nuclear cardiology procedures annually. Equipment includes two SPECT cameras with CT scanners for attenuation correction, a PET scanner, as well as multiple rooms equipped for exercise stress testing. Cardiology fellows spend a total of five months in nuclear cardiology throughout the three-year fellowship, which affords ample opportunity to perform exercise and pharmacologic stress testing and interpret nuclear cardiology procedures with an attending physician.

The nuclear cardiology rotation exposes fellows to SPECT and PET myocardial perfusion imaging, radionuclide ventriculography, and cardiac amyloid studies. Cardiac PET studies also include cardiac sarcoid evaluation, FDG viability imaging, and coronary flow reserve determination.

During the second and third years, fellows are expected to spend time with technologists to gain an understanding of image acquisition processing and quality control. Time is spent learning technical problems that can occur during the acquisition and processing of nuclear procedures. Fellows who choose to take nuclear cardiology boards are well-prepared from the nuclear cardiology rotations.