Introduction to nuclear medicine

In this chapter, the fundamentals of nuclear medicine, the advantages and disadvantages of this modality (compared with radiography and ultrasound), and some of the areas in diagnosis and treatment in which it has found widest acceptance will be discussed. Nuclear medicine procedures can be broadly categorized into three groups: in vivo imaging, usually requiring the injection of an organ-specific radiopharmaceutical; in vitro procedures, in which the radioactive agent is mixed with the patient's blood in a test tube; and in vivo nonimaging procedures, in which the patient receives the radiopharmaceutical (intravenously or orally) after which a measurement of the amount appearing in a particular biological specimen (blood, urine, stool) is performed. In vivo imaging procedures will be the principal topics of this chapter