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Nuclear medicine uses small amounts of radioactive substances (or tracers) for the diagnosis of various diseases. There are a number of different tracers, called 'radiopharmaceuticals' each designed to be taken up predominantly by one organ or cell type in the body. These tracers are injected, inhaled or swallowed after which they travel to the organ or tissue being investigated. After a certain time, the patient will be asked to lie down on an imaging table. Depending on the type of scan, a camera either rotates around or surrounds the patient, collects the radioactive signals from the tracer and creates a picture or image of the organ or tissue.
The information that the doctor obtains from these images is functional i.e. it tells how your tissue or organ is working. It is often not possible to obtain this type of information (or not with such accuracy) from other scanning techniques such as MRI, CT or ultrasound. These other techniques provide mainly anatomical information such its structural appearance and where it is located in relation to other tissues.