To highlight a number of achievements in nuclear medicine over the last decade, ANSTO welcomed, Principal Physicist Prof Dale Bailey from the Department of Nuclear Medicine, Royal North Shore Hospital who gave a talk as part of our Distinguished Lecture Series on 11 February at our Lucas Heights campus.
Australia’s nuclear medicine standards are currently among the best in the world. It is served well by extremely innovative physical scientists working in universities, government research facilities and tertiary referral hospitals.
Nuclear medicine, which is a medical specialty involving the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, in the past 10-15 years has experienced a massive shift towards “hybrid” imaging – where two (or more) complementary imaging modalities, such as X-ray CT and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) or Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) scanners, are combined into a functionally single device which provides high resolution spatial anatomical (form, or structure) and radionuclide distribution (function) images.
In addition, the nuclear imaging techniques maintain their quantitative characteristics and combines structure-function imaging results in a significant improvement in diagnostic capability – looking beyond simple forms to quantifying degree of disease, e.g., malignancy of a cancer.
Recently, PET scanners have been combined with NMR Imaging (MRI) and these will provide new areas of application, especially in magnetic resonance spectroscopy and radionuclide imaging.
The techniques are extremely valuable in monitoring response to treatment, allowing treatments to be changed if proving ineffective.