Overview
Nuclear medicine is the use of radioactive material within the body to examine how organs or tissues function (for diagnosis) or to target and eliminate damaged or diseased organs or tissue (for treatment).
Although we are all exposed to ionizing radiation in our daily lives, further exposures such as those from nuclear medicine treatments can slightly increase the chance of acquiring cancer later in life.
Nuclear medicine, often known as nucleology, is a medical specialty that uses radioactive chemicals to diagnose and cure disease. Nuclear imaging is, in some ways, "radiology done inside out," because it captures radiation emitted from within the body rather than radiation emitted from outside sources such as X-rays. Furthermore, nuclear medicine scans differ from radiology in that the emphasis is on function rather than anatomy.