Nuclear Medicine

The Nuclear Medicine (NM) division is comprised of three full-time clinical faculty members and two NM resident/fellows who perform all of the diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine procedures. Other important sectional faculty members are an NM physicist and a radiopharmacist. We have seven Siemens E-Cam SPECT gamma cameras (five of these are dual-head systems) and one Siemens Biograph LSO PET/CT system. Two of the dual-head SPECT units are dedicated to myocardial perfusion imaging and one of the single-head cameras is used primarily for cardiac blood pool imaging studies. Cardiac NM studies are jointly interpreted with a Cardiology fellow from the Division of Cardiology and our trainees. One of the Cardiology faculty members also interprets studies two days per week. We do a broad spectrum of therapeutic NM procedures, including radioiodine therapies for hyperthyroidism and thyroid cancer, Zevalin therapy for low grade lymphoma, bone pain palliation therapy, intra-articular therapy for hemophilia and intra-arterial Therasphere therapy for hepatocellular cancer (in cooperation with Vascular / Interventional Radiology). Our PET/CT service is heavily oriented toward oncology work, although we also do a reasonable volume of neurologic PET examinations. Our NM staff regularly attends multidisciplinary oncology conferences to present PET results and to advise oncology staff on new cases that should undergo a PET/CT study.

The Nuclear Medicine division performs approximately 10,000 nuclear medicine cases each year. About 40% of these are cardiac nuclear studies. In addition, we perform approximately 1,200 PET/CT studies annually, predominately whole body oncology studies.

To make an appointment with Nuclear Medicine, please call: 919-966-1884