File:Thyroid_scan.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Icd 10 pcs
- C
- Mesh
- D009683
- Ops 301 code
- 3-70 - 3-72 , 8-53
via Wikipedia infobox
Research
546,775 papersvia PubMed
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- academic discipline
- Subclass of
- radiology
- Image
- Viewer medecine nucleaire keosys.JPG
Show 3 more facts
- Commons category
- Nuclear medicine
- topic's main category
- Category:Nuclear medicine
- OpenStreetMap tag
- healthcare:speciality=nuclear
Sources (6)
via Wikidata · CC0
~26 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Nuclear medicine (nuclear radiology) is a medical specialty involving the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Nuclear imaging is, in a sense, radiology done inside out, because it records radiation emitted from within the body rather than radiation that is transmitted through the body from external sources like X-ray generators. In addition, nuclear medicine scans differ from radiology, as the emphasis is not on imaging anatomy, but on the function. For this reason, it is called a physiological imaging modality. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans are the two most common imaging modalities in nuclear medicine.
A nuclear medicine imaging machine in a hospital in North Carolina
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “nuclear medicine” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.