Nuclear Medicine

Nuclear medicine makes the patient an active part of the imaging process: radiolabelled pharmaceuticals are administered, linked to a metabolic process to be studied. The radiation emitted is captured to film or digitised. Image sequences may be captured to show dynamic changes in the distribution, allowing the detection of flow. Images obtained may be combined with other modalities such as general radiography, computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging to provide anatomical context.

Talk Topics

• Bone scans
    — fractures, metastases and dysplasia
• Cardiac scans
    — SPECT and myocardial perfusion
• Ventilation/Perfusion (V/Q) scans
    — normal, abnormal and comparison with CTPA
• Labelled blood-cell scans
    — white cell and red cell
• Specialised scans
• Positron emission tomography (PET)
• Therapeutic applications
    — e.g. iodine (I-131) for thyroid cancer