Nuclear Medicine

The Nuclear Medicine Division performs over 5000 diagnostic and therapeutic procedures annually, many on oncology patients. Services include nuclear imaging of bone, liver, spleen, thyroid, lungs (both ventilation and perfusion), kidneys, adrenals (pheochromocytoma), and other organs.

Specialized studies for specific oncologic problems include:

• Radioiodine searches for thyroid carcinoma
• MIBG scans for pheochromocytoma
• Gallium studies for lymphomas and other neoplasms
• Octreotide imaging of neural crest tumors (pheos, small cell cancer, carcinoids, gastrinomas, insulinomas)
• Ventriculogram measurements of ejection fraction in the chemotherapy patient
• Sestamibi studies for parathyroid adenomas (both benign and malignant); breast cancer; thyroid carcinomas; small cell cancer of lung
• Dual energy x-ray bone density measurements in patients with osteopenia (a frequent result of chemotherapy)
• FDG PET scanning for tumor staging and evaluation of response to radiation or chemotherapy
• Lymphoscintigraphy for sentinel node identification in breast cancer and skin melanomas.

Therapy procedures:

• Radioiodine treatment of thyroid cancer (our registry has more than 400 patients) and hyperthyroidism
• Radiostrontium for bone metastases in breast and prostate cancer
• P-32 for polycythemia vera
• Select radioimmunotherapies

The faculty in Nuclear Medicine includes:

David Feiglin, MD
Michele Lisi, MD
Mary McGrath, MD
Andrzej Krol (physics)
Robert Richardson (instrumentation)