With an excess of 3 billion people watching Sydneys "greatest Games in Olympic history", and again taking time-out to watch the amazing achievements of Paralympians, its not surprising that elite sport is now turning to technology to enhance performances in this multi-billion dollar industry. Sport has now entered the nuclear age in order to keep the top-class athlete, as well as the occasional jogger, "on track".
For the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, and the onset of the summer sports season, means a great deal of planning and organisation to meet the higher demand for the supply of nuclear medical isotopes.
Medical isotopes are playing an increasingly important part in sports medicine and are now part of a suite of techniques used by elite athletes to provide early diagnosis of likely stress and strain problems.
According to Dr Stuart Carr, Director of Radiopharmaceuticals at ANSTO, diagnostic pharmaceuticals are being increasingly used in sport medicine to diagnose stress fractures in particular. Stress fractures are hard to detect and a bone scan would be the test of choice, due to its ability to sense minute changes in bone.
"I guess the link between sports injury and nuclear technology is not obvious for most people. However it becomes more obvious when you realise that stress fractures are very tiny cracks in the bone, which rarely show up on plain film x-rays unless they have been there for some time," Dr Carr said.
"When an athlete sustains a foot or ankle fracture, their ability to perform virtually any sport activity is immediately impaired. So it's important that an exact diagnosis, based on physical exam findings and diagnostic images, happens as soon as possible to determine treatment.
"Meeting the increased demand means careful logistical planning for ANSTO. This is mainly because of the short half-life of certain radiopharmaceuticals, which have to be produced and transported to nuclear medicine centres and hospitals all within the short life span of the isotopes," Dr Carr explained.
Under general training programs the risk of injury in all sports and physical recreation is always there, with stress fractures reported to occur in almost all sports including swimming. The risk increases in contact sports such as football, wrestling, boxing or soccer. Gymnasts and cricketers may develop fractures in the lumbar spine.
The most common isotope used is Technetium-99m phosphate. Gallium-67 is also widely used. These isotopes are injected into the body. After a waiting period, an imaging device called a gamma camera will record the bone-emitted gamma rays as the isotope degenerates.
"The gamma camera takes a full body picture which indicates where the bone is damaged as a "hot spot", because the isotope is being absorbed rapidly in that area.
Bone scans require 3-5% bone destruction to be visible. That is up to 10 times more sensitive than plain film radiographs.
"It was around four years ago, that the specific technique of Diagnostic Imaging turned its attention to sports imaging. Prior to this it was a sub-specialty that offered a way to pinpoint injury and was used mainly to help orthopaedic surgeons plot repair", Dr Carr said.
Australian isotopes are produced by ANSTO and are distributed around the country as well as distributed to our near neighbours.