American Board of Nuclear Medicine 4555 Forest Park Blvd., Ste. 119 St. Louis, MO 63108 Tel: (314) 367-2225 www.abnm.org

A Nuclear Medicine physician uses the tracer principle, most often with radiopharmaceuticals, to evaluate molecular, metabolic, physiologic and pathologic conditions of the body for the purposes of diagnosis, therapy and research. Nuclear Medicine encompasses molecular imaging. Imaging systems are used to detect the tracer signal to provide spatial and temporal information on the processes of interest. A wide variety of diseases can be evaluated in this way. Changes in function usually occur before changes in structure thereby facilitating the earlier diagnosis of disease or response to therapy. The Nuclear Medicine physician often uses anatomic imaging combined with molecular imaging (e.g., PET/CT). The most common diagnostic applications of Nuclear Medicine include the early detection of coronary artery disease, cancer diagnosis and staging and the evaluation of the effect of cancer treatment. Some types of radioactive molecules can be used to treat cancer (e.g., lymphoma, thyroid cancer) or relieve the severe pain caused by cancer that has spread to bone.

The Nuclear Medicine physician is knowledgeable about tracer kinetics, the biologic effects of radiation exposure, the fundamentals of the physical sciences and the principles and operation of radiation detection and imaging systems.

Training Required: Three years

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