Nuclear Scan Machine

The test can detect problems with blood flow in the heart tissue and can diagnose ischemic heart disease.

Nuclear scan machine.

Scanning a limited area of your body takes less time. Receiving a radioactive injection called a tracer and using a spect machine to scan a specific area of your body. If you have coronary artery disease it is possible that you could experience chest pain during exercise or when a drug is given. Nuclear medicine scans provide the most useful diagnostic or treatment information for many diseases.

You ll begin by removing all jewelry. Nuclear bone scan procedure the first step in the procedure is the injection of the tracer material. Nuclear medicine scans can detect glandular dysfunctions like hyperthyroidism. Nuclear scans make pictures based on the body s chemistry like metabolism rather than on physical shapes and forms as is the case with other imaging tests.

The images are digitally generated on a computer and transferred to a nuclear medicine physician who interprets the images to make a diagnosis. The machine involved in this sort of test tends to be somewhat cavernous and patients must usually lie on their backs and be inserted into or covered completely by the scanning device. A technician will do this through a vein in your arm or hand. Nuclear medicine scans provide the most useful diagnostic or treatment information for many diseases.

A pet scanner is a large machine with a round donut shaped hole in the middle. A nuclear heart scan is an imaging test that uses special cameras and a radioactive substance called a tracer to create pictures of your heart. Nuclear medicine imaging is a method of producing images by detecting radiation from different parts of the body after a radioactive tracer is given to the patient. A scan of your entire skeleton takes as long as 60 minutes.

A nuclear medicine scan is less expensive and may yield more precise information than exploratory surgery. Receiving a radioactive substance. You may be required to change into a hospital gown. These scans use liquid substances called radionuclide s also called tracers or radiopharmaceuticals that release low levels of radiation.

It looks similar to a ct or mri unit. Spect scans involve two steps. The tracer dose is very small. You ll receive a radioactive substance through an intravenous iv infusion into a vein in your arm.

During the scan you ll be asked to lie still on a table while a machine with an arm like device supporting the gamma camera passes over your body to record the pattern of tracer absorption by your bones.