Nuclear Medicine
The Division of Nuclear Medicine provides diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, including cardiac, hematology and oncology, and endocrine services (particularly thyroid disorders and parathyroid disease). The division also offers a comprehensive range of diagnostic gastrointestinal, genitourinary, musculoskeletal, pulmonary, and neurologic exams.
A few examples of specific studies include bone mineral densitometry with DEXA for osteoporosis, labeled leukocyte imaging for abscess localization, exercise and pharmacologic myocardial perfusion imaging, monoclonal antibody imaging for detection of prostate and colorectal cancer metastases, functional brain scans, and SPECT for the detection and grading of tumors.
Therapeutic procedures include the use of radioactive iodine treatment of hyperthyroidism and thyroid cancer, strontium or samarium therapy is provided for painful bony metastases and P-32 therapy for hematologic disorders (such as thrombocytosis) as well as Ra-223 therapies for castration resistant prostate cancer. Antibody therapies labeled with yttrium-90 (Zevalin) are also being utilized for patients who are no longer responding well to their chemotherapy. In partnership with interventional radiology, radioembolic therapy with yttrium-90 spheres (SIR-Spheres and Theraspheres) are being used for therapy in primary and metastatic liver cancer patients.
Equipment for the Department of Nuclear Medicine includes: a variable angle SPECT camera, a single head spot camera with SPECT capabilities, three dual-headed whole body cameras with SPECT/CT capabilities, and two multi-slice PET/CT scanners. Two cyclotrons for research and human clinical use are now in service.
For bone densitometry, we use hologic DEXA units which measures AP spine, lateral spine, hip, wrist, and whole body regions.
The Nuclear Medicine department is working hard to integrate new imaging tracers, modalities, and therapies as they become available to better serve the regions patient population and keep the department at the leading edge of imaging practices.
The Nuclear Medicine department helps to train technologists, accepts visiting fellowship candidates, and trains radiology residents, medical students, and nuclear medicine residents/fellows.
Our faculty and staff works closely with our research partners (both internal and industry based) on a wide variety of studies and projects including new radiotracer design, new scanner design, new reconstruction methods, as well as application of existing scan methods in evaluating clinical questions. Regular collaboration with various internal labs and projects include:
- Molecular and Translational Imaging Lab
- Simon Cherry Lab
- Jinyi Qi Lab
- Julie Sutcliffe Lab
- EXPLORER project
Our Team
Section Chief: Lorenzo Nardo, M.D., Ph.D.
Click here to learn more about our Nuclear Medicine faculty.