Nuclear Medicine
- Small Animal GE Starport Gamma Camera with MiniStand Gantry System
- NuCam Large Animal Rectangular Gamma Camera with EquiStand II Gantry System
- Mirage acquisition software interfaced with NucLear MAC Imaging Computer System for image analysis
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Nuclear Medicine, also referred to as scintigraphy, is a sensitive diagnostic procedure. It often can detect abnormalities before they become apparent on other imaging studies. To perform a nuclear medicine procedure, a small quantity of a radioactive tracer is administered to the animal. The most common radioisotope used is Technetium-99m (99mTc) Technetium-99m has a short half-life (6 hours) and 94% of it will decay within 24 hours. A gamma camera is used to record the distribution of the radiotracer within the body. The radiotracer can be attached to a variety of biologically active chemicals to localize in certain areas of the body. Above is an example of a bone scan in a normal dog. The study was performed by injecting 99mTc-MDP. The 99mTc-MDP will localize in bone proportional to the metabolic activity of the bone. |
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One of the most common uses of bone scintigraphy is to detect bone metastasis. Left is an example of a dog with multiple sites of bone metastases seen as multiple areas of high intensity uptake. |
The University of Tennessee provides nuclear medicine as a routine clinical service 5 days a week. In addition, we have access to a PET/CT fusion scanner at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, and a microPET scanner at the University of Tennessee Preclinical Imaging lab.
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