New nuclear medical technologies for pediatrics.
Nuclear medicine is very helpful for pediatric diagnostics because it provides noninvasive methods for the evaluation of physiologic functions and for the imaging of tumours, metastases and inflammatory diseases. These examinations can be done with very low risk and with low radiation burden for the children. New technologies help us to get more detailed diagnostic information and to reduce further the radiation. The most important developments in this field allow the clinical use of radioisotopes with extremely short lifetimes combined with a very low radiation exposure, imaging of tumours by new radioactive labelled tumour-markers, the measurement of heart functions and blood flow through the use of computerized gammacameras with digital imaging processing capabilities and the three-dimensional imaging of radioactive tracers within the body.
D002648:Child; D006321:Heart / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D008168:Lung / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D009683:Nuclear Medicine / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D013679:Technology, Radiologic / Q000295:instrumentation; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000295:instrumentation