Nuclear Medicine

Nuclear medicine involves noninvasive and usually painless medical tests that help physicians diagnose medical conditions.

In a nuclear medicine exam, a "radiotracer" is injected into a vein, swallowed or inhaled as a gas. It eventually accumulates in the organ or area of your body being examined, where it gives off energy in the form of gamma rays.

This energy is detected by a gamma camera. The camera works with a computer to measure the amount of radiotracer absorbed by your body and to produce pictures showing the structure and function of organs and tissues.

What are the advantages?

A unique aspect of a nuclear medicine test is its extreme sensitivity to abnormalities in an organ’s structure or function. 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.