Understanding Nuclear Medicine
What is 'nuclear medicine'?
Nuclear medicine is a branch of medicine and medical imaging that uses a small amount of what we call radiotracers, or radiopharmaceuticals, to diagnose disease and to treat disease.
How does nuclear medicine differ from other types of radiology?
Nuclear medicine differs from other modalities that you may know about, like CT or MRI, in that those studies are anatomically based. They look at anatomy structure. Nuclear medicine looks at physiology of the body and of all the organ systems. We can follow the physiological processes as they occur in a living human using these radiopharmaceuticals and through use of appropriate imaging systems.
Why is it called nuclear medicine?
It is called nuclear medicine because we use a small amount of radioactive material, which are based on the nuclear properties of a substance.
How long has nuclear medicine been around?
Nuclear medicine has been around basically since the end of the second World War, so I would say five decades, or a little bit over five decades. In that sense, it's actually a brand new area of medicine.
How does nuclear medicine work?
What are the benefits and risks of nuclear medicine?
Well, the benefits of nuclear medicine is quite a lot, and it has contributed to the well being of humans for long time through helping with diagnosis and especially more recently helping with therapy in many of the conditions that humans suffer. For example, thyroid cancer and more recently lymphoma. The risks are actually compared to the benefits that we gain from nuclear medicine, and it's actually quite minimal. There is a radiation risk but that's also very small, and it's approximately the same level you receive from natural sources. And there's very little side effects associated with the administration of radio pharmaceuticals if any, and therefore the benefit to risk ratio for nuclear medicine is tremendous.
Who performs procedures in nuclear medicine?
Nuclear medicine is performed by a team of professionals. As a patient comes into the clinic, they are usually greeted by the nuclear medicine technician. These are certified technicians who administer the radio tracer and position the patient appropriately for taking the images. When the images are ready, they are presented to the nuclear medicine physician who may ask for additional images or different manoeuvres. And then finally, it is the nuclear medicine physician who interprets the images in association with all the other clinical data and quality of images to form a report which is given back to the referring physician.
What are examples of the uses of nuclear medicine?
What are some nuclear medicine exams?
Myocardial profusion imaging, which looks at the profusion of the heart in coronary artery disease, is a nuclear medical exam. There is bone scanning that is usually used for looking at the distributional extent of metastatic disease of some sort of cancer to the bone.
Which areas of the body does nuclear medicine help treat?
Nuclear medicine is used for all organ systems in the body - the central nervous system, the heart and major vessels, for gastrointestinal tract, for the urinary system including the kidneys, for soft tissues, for bones and skeleton, and for the lungs. Basically, every organ system is touched upon by nuclear medicine.
How is nuclear medicine used in relation to treating illnesses?
Nuclear medicine is used for a number of very important illnesses, including cancer, cardiac disorders such as coronary artery disease, inflammatory disorders, infections of any organ systems including soft-tissue and bone infections and brain disorders, for example, and gastrointestinal and urinary disorders.
Are there any new up and coming applications for nuclear medicine?
There are always up and coming new applications for nuclear medicine. More recently, there has been a lot of expansion in the role of pository emission tomography, or PET, in a variety of different cancers and also other disorders, for example in neurology and Alzheimer's disease, which is one of the most important ones in which PET is rapidly taking its strides. From the therapy point of view, nuclear medicine is expanding its role in treatment of lymphoma, for example, and through radio labelled antibodies. That's going to expand even more, perhaps into other types of cancer.
What advancements will nuclear medicine see moving forward?
There's always a stride for new tracers and new radio tracers, and that's why radiochemistry is very important in nuclear medicine. As we develop new tracers we are able to look at other physiological processes that we haven't been able to look at very carefully or accurately in the past. There's also strides in imaging systems, especially in what we call hybrid imaging systems which combine anatomy or a structure with physiological information through nuclear medicine. So both from the point of view of what is administered, radiochemistry, and from how we form the image through instrumentation of both, there are great advancements that are going on today.
