It is a way to gather medical information that may otherwise be unavailable, require surgery, or necessitate more expensive diagnostic tests. As an integral part of patient care, nuclear medicine is used in the diagnosis, management, treatment and prevention of serious disease. Nuclear medicine imaging procedures often identify abnormalities very early in the progression of a disease - long before some medical problems are apparent with other diagnostic tests. This early detection allows a disease to be treated early in its course when there may be a more successful prognosis. Nuclear medicine uses very small amounts of radioactive materials, or radiopharmaceuticals, to diagnose and treat disease.
Radiopharmaceuticals are substances that are attracted to specific organs, bones, or tissues.
When radiopharmaceuticals are introduced into the body, they produce emissions. A special type of camera, a gamma or PET camera, is used to transform these emissions into images and data which provide information about the area of the body being imaged. Although Nuclear Medicine is commonly used for diagnostic purposes, it also provides valuable therapeutic applications such as treatment of hyperthyroidism, thyroid cancer, blood imbalances and pain relief from certain types of bone cancers. Nuclear medicine has a complex and multifaceted heritage. A landmark event for nuclear medicine occurred in 1946 when a thyroid cancer patient's treatment with radioactive iodine caused complete disappearance of the spread of the patient's cancer.