Radioisotopes for nuclear medicine: the future

Full text: Nuclear medicine occupies an important niche in the spectrum of medical capability. Since its initial application on a routine basis over 30 years ago its importance has continued to grow. For example, it is expected that over 430,000 Australians will have a nuclear medicine procedure in 1998. Current procedures using nuclear medicine are mainly concerned with diagnosis of oncology, cardiology and neurology. The main radioisotope used in nuclear medicine is Tc 99m, which is produced by a 'so called' Mo-Tc 99m generator. Other isotopes which currently find routine use are Ga-67, Th-201 and I-131. The selective uptakes by particular organs or structures is facilitated by the use of 'cold kits' which after the chemistry of the radioisotope many of the recent advances have been concerned with increasing the selectivity for a particular organ structure. Several of these new agents show increased selectivity using antibody a peptide recognition units