Nuclear Medicine

Nuclear medicine is a growing specialized medical field in which
radiopharmaceuticals, i.e. drugs associated to radioactivity, are used for
diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. Since 1942, nuclear medicine has
progressed in such a way that it became a major diagnostic tool in hospitals.
The past ten years have seen the introduction of major technical breakthroughs
which will considerably modify the landscape of cancer treatment. Once
injected to the patient, the radiopharmaceutical drug aims at the tumour cell
– including metastases – selectively, settles there, and emits radiation.
Depending on the radiation type, the drug will either help identify the cells
or destroy them. Applications are not limited to oncology; indeed, nuclear
medicine has found interesting applications in cardiology and neurology as
well. The new millennium saw the introduction of the Hybrid imaging technology
PET/CT which combines the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) modality with
conventional high quality x-ray imaging. It took another two years until PET
could be combined with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in the hybrid
equipment PET/MR. New tracers (drugs for diagnosis) also came on the market
with different diseases as targets, such as prostate cancer, neuroendocrine
tumours, or Alzheimer’s disease. But the recent introduction of
radiotherapeutics in the treatment of cancer has brought major changes on the
market, for they can be much more powerful and specific than chemotherapeutics
or external radiation therapy. Combining radiodiagnostics to select positive
responders to a treatment with efficient radiotherapeutics opens a highway for
the development of theranostics, another word for personalized medicine. This
scientific book aims to introduce nuclear medicine to a larger audience,
pointing out, among other things, the difficulties met by both physicians and
patients when trying to access new technologies. This second edition shows how
much progress has been made over the past ten years since the original book
was published, and how much can be expected for patients within the next few
years.