Nuclear Medicine News and Research

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Nuclear medicine is a branch or specialty of medicine and medical imaging that uses radioactive isotopes (radionuclides) and relies on the process of radioactive decay in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. In nuclear medicine procedures, radionuclides are combined with other chemical compounds or pharmaceuticals to form radiopharmaceuticals.

Time-of-flight positron emission tomography provides benefits for cancer patients

Moving from computer simulation to patient images, researchers are now demonstrating the benefits that time-of-flight (TOF)/PET (positron emission tomography) imaging can provide for cancer patients.

5 Jun 2007

What causes Alzheimer's disease?

Researchers tied the accumulation of the toxic brain protein beta-amyloid to Alzheimer's disease, according to a study reported at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest society for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine professionals.

5 Jun 2007

PET plus CT - best test for ovarian cancer

An advanced molecular imaging technique influenced the management of women with ovarian cancer, detected more sites of disease and identified women whose disease was likely to progress, according to an Australian study released during the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest society for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine professionals.

5 Jun 2007

PET/CT best for monitoring Crohn's disease

The molecular imaging power of PET/CT is invaluable in noninvasively monitoring Crohn's disease,a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract that mainly affects young people, according to a study released by Belgian scientists at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM.

5 Jun 2007

PET accurately identifies esophageal cancer patients' positive responses to chemotherapy

Early metabolic imaging with positron emission tomography (PET) accurately identifies patients responding to chemotherapy for esophageal cancer, noted German researchers at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest society for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine professionals.

5 Jun 2007

Predicting treatment responses earlier for brain tumor patients

Using metabolic or molecular imaging to measure brain tumor patients' response to treatment is a powerful predictor of survival, notes a first-of-its-kind study presented at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest society for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine professionals.

5 Jun 2007

Percutaneous ethanol injection helps manage bone metastasis in thyroid cancer patients

Percutaneous ethanol injection (PEI), an injection of ethanol (alcohol) through the skin directly into a bone tumor to kill cancer cells, may be a valuable ancillary treatment for thyroid cancer patients whose cancer has spread to the bone.

5 Jun 2007

Combining molecular imaging technologies to stop/prevent heart attacks

The use of combined imaging technologies may hold the key to stopping and even preventing heart attacks, according to research reported at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest society for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine professionals.

5 Jun 2007

Molecular imaging provides a better way to visualize heart disease

Technically advanced molecular imaging provides a 3-D way to significantly improve the diagnosis of heart disease, according to researchers at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest molecular imaging and nuclear medicine society.

5 Jun 2007

Discovery of fungi that uses radioactivity as an energy source

Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use.

24 May 2007

FDG-PET imaging predicts lung cancer patients' response to chemotherapy

An earlier indication of whether chemotherapy benefits non-small cell lung cancer patients, provided by positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, can guide doctors in offering them better care, according to researchers in the May Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

10 May 2007

Average U.S. resident is exposed to nearly six times as much radiation from medical devices than in 1980

Data from the first large-scale study of U.S. population radiation exposure since 1989 show the annual per capita radiation dose increased 5.9 times, from 0.54 millisieverts in 1980 to 3.2 millisieverts in 2006.

18 Apr 2007

Early stage pancreatic cancer expresses antigen targeted by Immunomedics' PAM4 antibody

Immunomedics has reported in an oral presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) that the antigen targeted by the humanized PAM4 antibody is expressed in early stage pancreatic cancer specimens, a stage before the tumor becomes invasive.

18 Apr 2007

Heart muscle cell death is an active and ongoing process in heart failure

Using a nuclear medicine technique and molecular imaging to "see" programmed cell loss, the body's normal way of getting rid of unneeded or abnormal cells, may help in early identification of those individuals who are at risk of developing heart failure, say researchers in the April Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

3 Apr 2007

Research agreement to advance new imaging technology

The University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and T.I.E.S., LLC, a Rochester-based start-up company, have entered into a research partnership to evaluate a new technology that could ultimately represent a major advance in medical imaging.

29 Mar 2007

Targeted tumor therapy has paramount consequences for future expansion of nuclear medicine

Targeted tumor therapy lobs toxic payloads directly into tumors to destroy cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.

20 Oct 2006

Patients receiving treatment with radioisotopes may trigger security alarms

Patients receiving treatment with radioisotopes should be warned that they may trigger radiation alarms, say doctors in this week's British Medical Journal.

3 Aug 2006

Prognostic stratification of obese patients by Stress 99mTc-Tetrofosmin Myocardial Perfusion Imaging

Researchers identified an accurate method that may detect whether obese individuals have a low, intermediate or high risk of coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, notes a report in the August issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

2 Aug 2006

Yttrium-90 to control hepatocarcinoma

The University Hospital at the University of Navarra is the only centre throughout the entire Spanish state for the treatment of liver tumours by means of radioembolisation and the one with the greatest accumulated experiences in the treatment throughout Europe.

10 Jul 2006

The solitary pulmonary nodule - malignant or benign?

A new study published in the journal Respiration shows good overall diagnostic accuracy of technetium-99m (99mTc)-depreotide single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in separating malignant from benign solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs) of indeterminate origin.

19 Jun 2006