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Nuclear Medicine

Using radioactive material to save lives.

What is Nuclear Medicine?

What is Nuclear Medicine?

Nuclear medicine is a technique that uses a small amount of radioactive material to create pictures of the inside of the body or to provide treatments and therapy. Images can help doctors see how organs and tissues are functioning, which can be really useful in diagnosing and treating various health conditions. It’s a bit like getting a sneak peek inside your body without any surgery!

Specific uses of nuclear medicine include:

   –  Finding disease in its earliest stages

   –  Targeted treatment to specific cells

   –  Monitoring the bodies response to treatment

How did we start using Nuclear Medicine?

Examples of Nuclear Medicine

Diagnostic Imaging

Diagnostic imaging refers to a variety of methods for looking inside the body to confirm a diagnosis and determine the source of an illness or damage. It is also used by medical professionals to assess how well a patient’s body reacts to therapy for a sickness or fracture.

Most people will have some form of medical imaging in their lifetime. Common examples are:

X-Ray

Medical imaging began using X-rays almost immediately after they were discovered. Radiation is produced by an X-ray machine and travels through your body to produce an image. The X-rays are absorbed by your body in different ways by different areas. Soft tissue and lungs appear darker on X-ray images because they absorb less radiation than teeth and bones. In the pictures, teeth and bones appear whiter.

CT Scans

3D images of your body are created by CT scans. Images representing a wide range of illnesses and injuries are utilized for diagnosis, treatment planning, and monitoring. In order to inject dye that appears during a CT scan, you may need to have a tiny tube inserted into your arm. Before your scan, you could be asked to consume water or a drink that contains color and water. These are going to make various body components easier to see.

PET-CT or PET-MRI

PET (positron emission tomography) is a kind of nuclear medicine scan that can also provide 3D images. A tiny quantity of a radioactive material is infused into a vein. Numerous illnesses and ailments can be identified and tracked with the use of PET imaging. Normally, within a day, your body’s radioactivity becomes unnoticeable.

Therapeutic Applications

For therapy, radioactive materials are used to kill cancerous tissue, shrink a tumor or reduce pain. 

Some common types of radionuclide therapy are:

  • Treatment of over-active thyroid
  • Treatment of thyroid
  • Treatment of blood disorders
  • Chronic inflammatory rheumatism

Benefits

Benefits

1) The therapy is non-invasive meaning less traumatic than surgery. 2) It is a systemic treatment, which means that it targets sites which may not be known to exist by your doctor. 3) The treatment normally only consists of only one injection or oral dose.

Risks

Risks

1) The total radiation received from radionuclide therapy is generally so low that there is an insignificant risk that it will cause cancer in the future. 2) Radionuclide therapy is not carried out on pregnant women. 3) Allergic reactions to the radiopharmaceutical can occur, but are extremely rare.

Safety and Quality

Nuclear medicine is tightly regulated to ensure the safety of patients, healthcare professionals and the environment. Strict guidelines govern:

  • Radiation dosage: Limiting exposure to the minimum necessary for effective treatment.
  • Equipment standards: Ensuring medical facilities adhere to high-quality standards.

Explore Further

Choose from the articles below to continue learning about nuclear.

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Below you can find references to the information and images used on this page.