MUGA Scan

The MUGA scan (Multiple Gated Acquisition scan) is a tool that looks at how the heart functions. It takes a moving picture of the beating heart, and from this image, the health of the cardiac ventricles (the heart's major pumping chambers) can be determined. If a person has had a heart attack or any other disease that affects the heart muscle, the MUGA scan can identify the part of the heart muscle that was damaged. It can also figure out the degree of the damage.

When having a MUGA scan, a radioactive substance called Technetium 99 is attached to red blood cells, which are then injected into the person's bloodstream. The person is then placed under a special camera (called a gamma camera), which picks up the low-level radiation being given off by the Technetium-labeled red cells. (The level of radiation to which a person is exposed during a MUGA scan is felt by experts to be quite small - it is in the same range as the level of radiation you get with a chest x-ray.) An image is produced by the gamma camera that outlines the chambers of the heart. The final image is like a movie of the heart beating.