Addenbrooke’s Department of Nuclear Medicine has come joint runner-up in a national scheme to recognise excellence in nuclear medicine – the Ammy award sponsored by GE Healthcare.

The nuclear medicine team submitted an abstract outlining their contribution to the development of a local BSc (Hons) training scheme. Successful trainees go on to join a pool of registered nuclear medicine technologists available for employment.

Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses safe, painless, and cost-effective techniques for research, to perform diagnostic investigations which includes taking images of the body and also to treat disease.

For imaging, the nuclear medicine team gathers medical information that might otherwise require more expensive diagnostic tests, surgical intervention or might not be available by any other means.

Nuclear medicine imaging procedures often identify problems very early in the progression of a disease – often long before some medical problems are apparent using other diagnostic tests.

Nuclear medicine is also used in the management, treatment and prevention of a wide range of serious diseases, for example in the heart, renal disease, bone injuries and cancers. Nuclear medicine uses very small amounts of radiopharmaceuticals (radioactive materials) which are often given by injection. They are attracted to specific organs, bones or disease. The radiopharmaceuticals give off gamma rays, which are a high-energy type of radiation. The gamma rays can be detected by special cameras, which when used with powerful computers, can form images and display information about the body.

You can find out more about Nuclear Medicine at Addenbrooke's here

Last updated: 18 August 2006