Equipment used in nuclear medicine

Detection of radiation is the common purpose of all equipment's and instruments used in radioisotope laboratories. The first and most important instrument that was used in nuclear medicine was Geiger tube developed by H.W. Geiger as early in 1908. He in association with Mueller developed the so called Geiger-Muller tube (GM tube) which could be used to detect beta and gamma radiations. In spite of its severe limitations, GM tube remained the only external counting device until 1949. In 1948, Kallman reported that the scintillations can be detected and amplified with the help of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). In comparison with gas filled detectors, scintillation detectors have two principal advantages that augment their use in nuclear medicine. Firstly, they are capable of much higher counting rates because of fast resolving times and secondly, because they are much more efficient for gamma ray detection. The scintillation detector is the most basic block of any modern radioisotope detection instrument like rate meter, counter, scanner, gamma camera or single photon emission computed tomography. (author)