Nuclear medicine is an area where both patients and occupational radiation doses are among the highest in diagnostic imaging modalities today. Therefore, a good understanding and proper application of radiation protection principles are of great importance. Such understanding will allow optimization of practice that will be translated into cost savings for health care administrations worldwide. This chapter will tackle: radiation protection in the routine practice of both diagnostic and therapy applications in nuclear medicine including PET, diagnostic facility design, safety aspects of the common radionuclides used in clinics, the safety of the pregnant and breast feeding patients, radiation effect of exposure to ionizing radiation, and risk estimates. The chapter will discuss the operational radiation safety program requirements applied to Conventional Nuclear Medicine using Gamma Cameras, SPECT/CT, PET/CT, and Radioiodine therapy facilities. The chapter will serve as a quick reference and as a guide to access more detailed information resources available in the scientific literature.
Part of the book: Nuclear Medicine Physics
This basic modes of radioactive decay review “Gamma Rays” reviews some topics related to radiation, its classification and importance. In general, gamma rays interfere with our life, so we need to comprehend radiation as fact around us all the time and all the time. We live in a naturally radioactive world, but to what extent do physicians, nurses, and medical technicians, who may have to deal with urgent cases of a radiation, know about it? This chapter will address what radiation is and what is its role. This chapter will guide us toward the knowledge of ionizing radiation and its certain forms such as alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, and X-rays. as well as it will review on radioactive decay (nuclear decay) as well as help us learn about radioactivity and radiation, in addition to the types of decays, which are divided into beta decay, gamma decay, electron capture, positron decay, and alpha decay. This chapter will focus on radioactive decay, the activity and units of radioactive activity, and half-life of it. The last part of this chapter discusses attenuation as the reduction in the intensity of gamma ray or X-ray beam. The most important subtitles that are scattered from attenuation are HVL mean free path, the linear attenuation coefficient, pair production, and photoelectric scattering.
Part of the book: Use of Gamma Radiation Techniques in Peaceful Applications
Radiopharmaceuticals are radioactive compounds which have a bound radionuclide in their structure. It is used to direct the radionuclide to a location to be treated or to obtain images. Nuclear medicine is the science that in the charge of employing radiopharmaceuticals, which is very useful support for medicine assisting in several diagnoses and treatments for cancer. The main aim of this work is to shed lights on the main radionuclides and metal complexes which are used as radiopharmaceuticals. Radiopharmaceuticals are compounds of technetium (99mTc) is considered as the main metal complexes like sodium pertechnetate and methylenediphosphonate MDP99mTc and other compounds which used in nuclear medicine for diagnosis such as: (1) indium (111In); (2) thallium (201Tl); (3) gallium (67Ga, 68Ga); (4) iodine (123I and 131I); (5) chromium (51Cr); (6) sulfur (35S); (7) phosphorus (32P); (8) a18F. They are very important in the early diagnosis for several diseases such as cancer, kidney, cardiovascular, liver. Generally, technetium compounds are main radiopharmaceuticals, widely all over the word.
Part of the book: Radiopharmaceuticals