Nuclear Medicine
What is Nuclear Medicine
Nuclear Medicine is a medical Speciality which utilizes open radioactive sources for diagnosis and therapy. The ability to probe physiological and biochemical processes at subcellular levels makes this a unique molecular diagnostic and therapeutic branch of medicine. The basic principle of Nuclear Medicine is to tag a chemical with a radioactive isotope so that the movement of this chemical through various aspect of metabolism can be visualized externally. Such a chemical is called a radiopharmaceutical (RPS). By switching a gamma emitting radioisotope used for diagnosis with a beta or an alpha emitter the same RPS can be used for targeted cellular radiotherapy.
Scope of services.
- The Nuclear Medicine Division of RCC provides both diagnostic and therapeutic services.
- The diagnostic services are primarily performed on a dual head gamma camera SPECT system (GE Infinia II). This includes studies such as MDP bone scan, both small dose and high dose 131-I scan for thyroid, 99mTcO4 scan for thyroid, DTPA Renograms, DMSA for renal scan as well as DMSA(V) scan for medullary Ca thyroid, Sestamibi scan for tumor imaging, parathyroid imaging, and cardiac imaging, Hepatobiliary imaging, sialoscintigraphy, MUGA scan, RBC labelled blood pool imaging.
- In vitro immunioassay services include assay of hormones ( T3, T4, TSH, fT3, fT4, aTG, ATPO, PTH, Tesosterone, Prolactin), Tumor markers like (AFP,CEA,PSA, TG,b2Microglobulin,Calcitonin,CA125,CA 19.9)
- Therapeutic services include treatment of thyrotoxicosis and Ca Thyroid.