Nuclear medicine may be a medicine involving the appliance of radioactive substances within the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Nuclear medicine imaging is done during a sense which is called “endoradiology” because it helps to records radiation emitting from within the body instead of radiation that’s generated by external sources like X-rays.

In addition, medicine scans differ from radiology, because the emphasis isn’t on imaging anatomy, but on the function. For such reason, it’s called a physiological imaging modality. Single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans are the two commonest imaging modalities in medicine..

Interventional nuclear medicine

Radionuclide therapy are often use to treat conditions like hyperthyroidism, thyroid cancer, and blood disorders. In medicine therapy, the radiation treatment dose is run internally (e.g. intravenous or oral routes) instead of from an external radiation source. Most medicine therapies are often performed as outpatient procedures since there are few side effects from the treatment and therefore the radiation exposure to the overall public are often kept within a safe limit.

Gamma Knife therapy

A treatment using gamma rays, a kind of high-energy radiation which will be tightly focused on small tumors or other lesions within the head or neck, so little or no normal tissue receives radiation. The gamma rays are aimed toward the tumor from many various angles directly, and deliver an outsized dose of radiation exactly to the tumor in one treatment session. This procedure is a type of stereotactic radio surgery.

Gamma Knife radiosurgery is a very precise form of radiation therapy that focuses intense beams of gamma rays with pinpoints accuracy to treat lesions in the brain.

Gamma Knife radiosurgery is named “surgery” because its outcome is analogous thereto of a surgery. Gamma Knife radiosurgery are often effective in treating tumors, vessel malformations and nerve conditions. In this each surgeons and oncologists use the Gamma Knife system differently:

Radiosurgery for tumor treatment works by damaging or destroying the DNA of tumor cells so that these cells cannot reproduce or grow. Over time, the brain tumor shrinks.

For blood vessel malformations, such as an arteriovenous malformation, Gamma Knife treatment causes the malformed blood vessels gradually to close off.

Nerves are the target for treatment in the case of the pain disorder trigeminal neuralgia, radiosurgery which helps to diminishes the function of improperly acting nerves, which provides relief.

Gamma Knife radiosurgery is employed to treat certain conditions of the brain, many of which could only be treated by open surgery had this feature not become available. At the Gamma Knife Center, our expert neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists most often use the Leksell Gamma Knife Icon to treat the following brain conditions:

Primary brain tumors, in particular:

Acoustic neuroma/Vestibular Schwannoma

Pituitary tumor

Craniopharyngioma

Glioma

Meningioma

Hemangioblastoma

Glomus jugulare tumor

Additionally:

Chordoma

Pediatric brain tumors

Arteriovenous malformation

Trigeminal neuralgia

Essential tremor

Epilepsy

Obsessive-compulsive disorder