The Highlight of the 31^st JSNC Annual Scientific Meeting from the Congress Chair

On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to express our great appreciation to all attendee, presenters, sponsors and cooperators who made significant contributions to the success of the 31^st Japanese Society of Nuclear Cardiology (JSNC) Annual Scientific Meeting, which was held on June 25^th-26^th, 2021. The JSNC 2021 was originally scheduled to be held in Fukushima city, but the meeting presented as a virtual conference due to public health concerns surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) crisis. The virtual online program included oral presentations, as well as symposiums throughout the conference. A total of 489 persons, including 389 physicians and medical representatives, 51 technologists and pharmaceutical science, attended the JSNC 2021 annual meeting. Fifty-five abstracts were presented in the scientific sessions, including Young Investigator Award and Technical Award sessions.

The JSNC 2021 Award Winners are shown in Table 1. Three physicians presented as the finalist of the 21^st Young Investigator Award competition among 8 candidates, and one technologist won the 10^th Technical Award from 2 candidates. Dr. Takahiro Doi, Department of Cardiology, Teinekeijinkai Hospital, received the 22^nd JSNC Award as a promising physician who has performed clinical researches in the field of nuclear cardiology.

The highlight of 2021 program was the JSNC-American Society of Nuclear Cardiology joint symposium regarding the topic of cardiac amyloidosis. Prof. Dorbala from the Harvard University showed that bone-avid single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) has promising clinical applications for early diagnosis, risk assessment and response to therapy in cardiac amyloidosis. In addition, developing quantitative evaluation of positron emission tomography (PET) would provide crucial first step toward early diagnosis and cost-effectiveness evaluation of cardiac amyloidosis in the heart and whole body. Another program highlighted the up-to-date research findings and future perspectives of myocardial ischemia and various cardiomyopathies using cardiac multimodality imaging.

We hope that your participation in the JSNC 2021 was helpful to clinical and technological advances in nuclear cardiology. Thank you again for your participation in the JSNC 2021 meeting.