Therapeutic radioisotopes can be used to treat certain thyroid problems, blood imbalances and pain from certain types of bone cancer. Unlike traditional radiology, nuclear medicine provides physicians with real-time moving images that allow them to view irregular heartbeats, airway or gastric obstructions and kidney function in transplant recipients. We offer patients the expertise of physicians and researchers in different specialties under one roof, and we can do it with the most modern equipment and the highest degree of safety. Every patient seen in nuclear medicine is treated as a special individual with a unique problem requiring a specially designed examination in full consultation with the patient s physician. The Radiology Picture Archiving System, the Hospital Information System for patient records and the Radiology Scheduling and Information System.
Images are currently available to physicians throughout the hospital.
Referring physicians soon will be able to access nuclear medicine images from their community offices via the Internet with a special code. As part of the collaboration with corporate partner, SMV, University physicians will evaluate the new generation of gamma cameras and the latest emerging nuclear technologies. Among the department s research interests are using the new equipment for coincidence detection imaging in the staging of cancer and the application of attenuation correction, a technique to make individual diagnoses more precise by compensation for anatomical differences from one patient to another. The department also is launching clinical trials of new imaging drugs that may help in the diagnosis and treatment of colon cancer and in the more accurate diagnosis of blood clots in the lungs and legs. As many as 12 million nuclear medicine imaging and therapeutic procedures are done each year in the United States.