Joint Program in Nuclear Medicine Technology

What is Nuclear Medicine?

The nuclear medicine technologist is a highly specialized health care professional who works closely with the nuclear medicine physician. Some of the technologist’s primary duties are to:

• Prepare and administer radioactive compounds known as radiopharmaceuticals.
• Perform patient imaging procedures using sophisticated radiation detecting instrumentation.
• Accomplish computer processing and image enhancement.
• Analyze biologic specimens in the laboratory.
• Provide images, data analysis, and patient information to the physician for diagnostic interpretation.

Nuclear medicine will continue to be a field at the forefront of modern technological development. The future has not been brighter thanks to:

• The development of new radiopharmeceuticals for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
• Promising research development of cancer detecting and cancer killing agents such as genetically engineered antibodies.
• The expanding use of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) which provides new and unique ways of studying biochemistry and metabolism within living tissue.
• The utilization of other imaging modalities that have been combined with nuclear medicine technology to provide the physician the images needed for diagnosis as well as treatment.