Talk:Nuclear medicine

message: "For example, the second most commonly used radionuclide is Tc-99m, following the most commonly used radionuclide, F-18 (which is produced by accelerator bombardment of O-18 with protons."
I do NOT agree with this.. for me the most used radionuclide is by far Tc-99m, maybe followed by F-18   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.218.148.129 (talk) 15:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: Given some of the talk on this page, it seems that this article has been subjected to some vandalism, apparently due to misguided concerns about nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, etc. Maybe the articles could be resticted to editing, or maybe even the title could be changed somehow to avoid attacks of this kind.
-David
64.73.227.163 03:45, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism

message: Hi All,
I'm of the opinion that the entire following section should be moved to "Gamma-camera", as this seems to be a specific topic within a broad-titled article. There is already a link within the article for further explanation of a gamma-camera if the reader is interested and wants to explore further. 
I'd originally written this to be a layperson's article, without wishing to delve too deeply into instrumentation, nuclear physics, physiology, etc. under this title.
Opinions? Comments? If I don't hear any objections, I'll move that slab to gamma-camera.
- Adam
Proposing to move this:
Traditionally, gamma-cameras have consisted of a gamma-ray detector, such as a single large sodium iodide scintilation crystal, coupled with an imaging sub-system such as an array of photo-multiplier tubes and associated electronics. Solid-state gamma-ray detectors are available, but are not yet commonplace. Currently, a company called Digirad (http://www.digirad.com) ® is the primary producer of the Solid-state gamma camera. Gamma-cameras employ lead collimators to form an image of the radionuclide distribution in the body on the gamma-ray detector.
Gamma-camera performance is usually a balance of spatial resolution against sensativity. A typical gamma-camera will have a resolution of 4 to 6 mm and will be able to capture several hundred thousand gamma-ray 'events' per second. The gamma-camera will detect the X an Y position of each gamma-ray event, and these coordinates will be used to build an image, as shown above. In nuclear medicine, the value of an image pixel is the integral of gamma-ray events in that pixel position over time. In non-tomographic images, the pixel can also be thought of as the line integral of radionuclide distribution of a perpendicular line extending from the pixel position through the body of the patient. The units of a raw nuclear medicine image is 'counts' or 'kilocounts', refering to the number of gamma-ray events detected.
Since each nuclear medicine radionuclide has a unique gamma-ray emission energy spectrum, and since the energy of a gamma-ray is detected in a gamma-camera by the brightness of the scintilation associated with an event, gamma-cameras employ energy 'windows' to gate or limit the imaging process to gamma-ray events of particular energies. An energy window is usually tailored to the peak of the energy spectrum of a particular radionuclide, and to ignore other gamma-rays that would otherwise contribute noise to the image. This allows noise caused by compton scattering to be gated out.
:Disagree; a brief mention of the principles of a gamma camera belong here. JFW | T@lk 13:43, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Gamma-camera

message: This article is now very general, and does not actually mention any common scans (V/Q scintigraphy, bone scan, thyroid studies, SestaMIBI scans). I do not have access to a nice list. Does anyone else? JFW | T@lk 13:43, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Details

message: What entails nuclear medicine? Is radiation therapy part of  it? Or it is mostly only nuclear imaging? fnielsen 08:13, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nuclear medicine / nuclear imaging 

message: A point was brought up in nuclear power - there's no discussion of the source of the specific radioisotopes mentioned in this article. Simesa 01:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nuclear Reactors 

message: It is completely biased in favour of nuclear energy
* Could you point out what in specific is biased in favour of nuclear energy? This article deals with nuclear medicine. --Drahreg01 16:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased 

message: Hey I'm new to this whole thing so I didn't want to change it myself but I believe new legislation in the US at least prevents most hospitals from doing their own radiopharmacy stuff (ie using a reactor to make tc 99m from molibdinum )but I'm just a nuc med student and don't necessarily trust myself as an authority, anybody know for sure?  Here's the text I'm referring to:
 Nuclear medicine diagnostic tests are usually provided by a dedicated department within a hospital --and may include facilities for the preparation of radiopharmaceuticals--. The specific name of a department can vary from hospital to hospital, with the most common names being the nuclear medicine department and the radioisotope department —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.137.86.56 (talk) 18:07, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: i agree with everything  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.188.154.176 (talk) 00:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: By "preparation of radiopharmaceuticals" the article is not necessarily talking about preparation of radioisotopes, but the chemical carriers for them. Sometimes this must be done at a hospital, because the half-life of the isotope is too short for it to be transported efficiently, after it is attached to the carrier. A classic example is various carriers for technetium-99m, which would be attached to the isotope after it is extracted from the generator, but this would be done on-site (unless there are some new regs that I don't know about!). As for preparation of radioisotopes, of course nobody will have a nuclear reactor, but a classic example would be a medical cyclotron for preparation of F-18. Are you suggesting that these are going away? SBHarris 08:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  radiopharmacy reference in background section 

message: Dear all,
This article needs updating and reorganization of information that would be more relevant to patients, clinicans, researchers, medical students or a general public with an interest in Nuclear Medicine.  Since NM is a medical specialty, the article should focus more on the clinical aspect of NM, rather than the physics of NM or research topics.  I am a member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and will be editing the article over the next few weeks to bring relevant and updated information to Wikipedia.  Thank you.  Please let me know if you any suggestions.  Thank you. Myohan (talk) 21:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the major one is to please remember WP:SS. It may be that there is a lot of info here which isn't clinical enough to warrant the depth of discussion in clinical wiki (one that is clinical by definition = nuclear MEDICINE), but that doesn't mean that the extra info on research and physics should disappear. Instead it needs summary within this article, and the extra info spun off into {main} subarticles on physics and research topics within this field. Of course all clinical medicine has a physics/physiology and research underpinning and we don't want to lose this info in an encyclopedia. Just don't delete stuff until you're sure that summary and move is not the answer. SBHarris 08:19, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent!  This article needs revision so that it will be more useful for a wider range of readers.  The Society of Nuclear Medicine is an international organization, but it is centered in the United States.  I would encourage editors from other parts of the world to contribute as well. Tony46 (talk) 19:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

text: Essentially, yes. PET is a subset of nuclear medicine, which is the part of medical practice that makes use of radioisotopes. PET must use positron-emitting radioisotopes (and can't "see" any others), but nuclear medicine as a field also uses other non-PET techniques, using various other radioisotopes which emit gamma rays (for imaging) and occasionally other particles as well (for treatment). Technetium is one of these. SBHarris 08:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

text: Yes. No information should be deleted. If it is "clogging up" a main article, that is a clue it must be summarized and go into a new subarticle, per WP:SS. That's the way Wikipedia grows-- this is all as normal as re-potting a plant as it gets larger. SBHarris 08:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updating and reorganizing the Nuclear Medicine Section 

message: Radionuclide imaging or nuclear scintigraphy deserves a specific article, because nuclear medicine is a very broad field of study. It would facilitate all links to it - it's confusing when it's redirected to the whole field of study. Mikael Häggström (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm doing it now. Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:24, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree with doing it now, as the article is not long enough. And are you going to include brachytherapy in the treatment section, or not? Or have a merge/split debate there, too? I think it best to let the non-brachytherapy therapy uses of nuc-med (which are few) stay here, since they take up little room. SBHarris 17:17, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, actually there won't be very much of a split, rather a new article on scintigraphy. It is just one of several ways of diagnostic nuclear medicine (PET being another), so not very much will be removed from this one. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:12, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Don't forget that we already have one on gamma camera. In general, it's usually better to wait until articles exceed the 50 K lower limit of the "too large" size, before thinking of spinning off subarticles. You can do it prematurely, but what's the point? When you do, somebody just comes along and suggests a merger, and then there's more drama. SBHarris 00:08, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Gamma cameras are used in SPECT and PET as well, and I think scintigraphy deserves an own article just as much as PET and SPECT. I just submitted the scintigraphy article. I think it should be separate in any case, but could accept it being a subsection in another article as well if the consensus tells so. Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:17, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

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thread_title:  [[:File:PET-MIPS-anim.gif]] to appear as POTD soon 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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