Nuclear Medicine is used in a number of specialities.

Cancer – detection and staging

A tumour results in much greater cellular activity than surrounding areas, consuming more energy and growing relatively fast. With the correct radiopharmaceutical, the nuclear medicine image will show the tumour as a centre that consumes much more of this drug than its surroundings, helping to detect them – often far before they would be visible anatomically.

Cardiology – determining blood supply to the heart

A myocardial perfusion scan – under both rest and stress conditions – identifies portions of the heart receiving or not receiving blood, determining when and whether the muscle is being fed with blood.  If it is not being fed, the problem is usually with the arteries, and the patient often goes to catheterisation or coronary CT angiogram to determine the nature of the problem.  The net effect is to reduce the number of unnecessary procedures.

Neurology – early detection of Parkinson’s Disease

Typically, Parkinson’s is diagnosed clinically.  However, clinical diagnosis has been shown to be unproven in one of five cases..  Essential tremor (ET) is a common cause of this misdiagnosis of Parkinsonian syndromes (PS).  Nuclear medicine imaging has recently been developed as a highly sensitive method for early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.  The appropriate radiopharmaceutical I123 Ioflupane (DAT scan) highlights the level of activity in the basal ganglia of the brain.