Abstract
In nuclear medicine, highly sensitive scanners have been developed to image the distribution and fate of radioactively labelled molecules within living subjects. The radioactive labelling of metabolically important molecules has offered great opportunities in research, pre-clinical applications and diagnostics. These radiotracers are applied to the subject and are taken up, metabolized, catabolized in and excreted from organs. Their functions may be observed and analyzed from outside the body.
Two-dimensional images recorded with a gamma camera positioned over a specific organ can deliver time–activity data on a radiotracer. Three-dimensional images may be obtained using the tomographic modalities single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) in combination with dedicated image reconstruction algorithms. Besides the functional images in nuclear medicine, anatomical images such as provided from X-ray computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offer a superior information on the subject’s anatomy. Combined or even hybrid scanners of functional and anatomical imaging modalities, such as PET/CT, SPECT/CT and very recently MR-PET, have been introduced.
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Weirich, C., Herzog, H. (2012). Instrumentation and Physical Principles. In: Gründer, G. (eds) Molecular Imaging in the Clinical Neurosciences. Neuromethods, vol 71. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/7657_2012_54
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/7657_2012_54
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