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What Is Nuclear Medicine?

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The development of nuclear technology was one of the most significant achievements of the twentieth century. Nuclear medicine technique in hospitals use radioactive materials to treat patients. Medical radioisotopes have been used in nuclear medicine for many years for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Atoms of an element that have the same mass number but different neutron numbers are known as isotopes. For diagnostic techniques, the radioactive isotope is injected or inhaled by the patient and attached to a bioactive molecule that allows the radiologist to provide information about the disease or the function of certain organs without surgery by using radiation detectors located outside of the patient body. Applications include heart …show more content…

The multidisciplinary nature of nuclear medicine makes it difficult for medical historians to determine the birthdate of nuclear medicine. This can probably be best placed between the discovery of artificial radioactivity in 1934 and the production of radionuclides by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for medicine related use, in 1946. Many historians consider the discovery of artificially produced radionuclides by Frédéric JoliotCurie and Irène JoliotCurie in 1934 as the most significant …show more content…

Figure 1 shows a typical diagram of cyclotron. The Dees are connected to an alternating electric source, which changes the polarity of the electric field periodically. Then, when a charged particle is generated and enters into a region of cross magnetic and electric field, it will attach towards the negative plate. After that, the particle follows a semicircular path and returns to the gap between the Dees, the polarity of electric field will change and attract the charged particle to the negative plate in the other Dee, following a circular path with a larger radius. The magnetic field will put the particle in a circular motion while the electric field will increase its speed. As a result, the particle will follow a circular path with increasing speed as well as energy. As the process continues, the particle will have sufficient energy and exit from the Dee by using a deflecting plate and window system. Finally, the accelerated particle such as alpha, beta, an electron then hits a target material to produce medical isotopes (Cyclotron Produced Radionuclides,

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