Medical Physics Explained: Nuclear Medicine
I am waiting for music to transfer so I can reformat my mp3 player, prior to reloading music, remembering never ever to select MTP mode, and attempting to actually create some playlists.
(My mp3 player is ... good for the price. But it doesn't seem to handle playlists well at all; there is no way of making playlists on the player, and although there are copious guides online as to how to create playlists for it under Ubuntu, none of them have yet worked. *sigh*)
I should really be going to bed; tired, so tired; fell asleep while in planning today (for the first time in a very long time). However, I'm intending to work late tomorrow, so I'd really quite like to have music in a useable form. Therefore, while I wait for a bajillion gig of music to transfer in various directions, I bring you: nuclear medicine.
Nuclear medicine, in a nutshell, means injecting (or otherwise dosing) people with radioactive substances. The rest of diagnostic radiology deals with images created using an external radiation source; nuclear medicine is very much internal. The exciting result of this is that x-rays etc. show anatomy brilliantly, whereas nuclear medicine is all about function.
As with all areas, the role of physicists in nuclear medicine involves a lot of quality assurance: we test equipment weekly, and monthly, and six monthly; we carry out detailed surveys of equipment prior to first clinical use, and after maintenance, and finally any time something seems to not quite be working correctly. In nuclear medicine, most of the tests are associated with image quality - checking that a cameras spatial and contrast resolution aren't degrading to a point where clinical use is compromised, for example. We test non-imaging equipment as well, though, like the well calibrators used to measure the activity of radiation in a patient injection, or the gamma counters used to count radioactive blood samples.
On the clinical side of things, we look at quantitative (or semi-quantitative) analysis of data. Sometimes that data involves images; assessment of the change in activity (recorded counts) within an area over time, for example, or the total activity taken up in an area. I did a project a couple of months ago looking at the current protocol for calculating thyroid uptake index vs. two different methods using some commercial software, looking to assess the differences and potential impact of changing the protocol.
Sometimes there are no images at all - I wrote about 11 pages of my portfolio on calculation of glomerular filtration rate, I could bore you about it for days, instead I will just note that it involves administering a known activity of tracer, and then taking blood samples at given intervals, and counting the activity remaining in the blood to work out how quickly the kidneys are filtering the tracer out.
In some centres, the radiopharmacy is physics-led, which makes sense on the side of strict radiation protection rules, but not on the side of strict pharmaceutical rules. And talking of radiation protection, physicists are required by law to be involved in radionuclide therapies - we advise on radiation protection issues from 'don't sit next to pregnant women for a few hours' to comprehensive rules on handling thyroid cancer patients, who are treated with a high enough activity of radioiodine that they have to spend three or four days as an in-patient in a lead-shielded room.
I shall now go back to sorting out my music collection, and hopefully very soon to bed. *yawns*
(My mp3 player is ... good for the price. But it doesn't seem to handle playlists well at all; there is no way of making playlists on the player, and although there are copious guides online as to how to create playlists for it under Ubuntu, none of them have yet worked. *sigh*)
I should really be going to bed; tired, so tired; fell asleep while in planning today (for the first time in a very long time). However, I'm intending to work late tomorrow, so I'd really quite like to have music in a useable form. Therefore, while I wait for a bajillion gig of music to transfer in various directions, I bring you: nuclear medicine.
Nuclear medicine, in a nutshell, means injecting (or otherwise dosing) people with radioactive substances. The rest of diagnostic radiology deals with images created using an external radiation source; nuclear medicine is very much internal. The exciting result of this is that x-rays etc. show anatomy brilliantly, whereas nuclear medicine is all about function.
As with all areas, the role of physicists in nuclear medicine involves a lot of quality assurance: we test equipment weekly, and monthly, and six monthly; we carry out detailed surveys of equipment prior to first clinical use, and after maintenance, and finally any time something seems to not quite be working correctly. In nuclear medicine, most of the tests are associated with image quality - checking that a cameras spatial and contrast resolution aren't degrading to a point where clinical use is compromised, for example. We test non-imaging equipment as well, though, like the well calibrators used to measure the activity of radiation in a patient injection, or the gamma counters used to count radioactive blood samples.
On the clinical side of things, we look at quantitative (or semi-quantitative) analysis of data. Sometimes that data involves images; assessment of the change in activity (recorded counts) within an area over time, for example, or the total activity taken up in an area. I did a project a couple of months ago looking at the current protocol for calculating thyroid uptake index vs. two different methods using some commercial software, looking to assess the differences and potential impact of changing the protocol.
Sometimes there are no images at all - I wrote about 11 pages of my portfolio on calculation of glomerular filtration rate, I could bore you about it for days, instead I will just note that it involves administering a known activity of tracer, and then taking blood samples at given intervals, and counting the activity remaining in the blood to work out how quickly the kidneys are filtering the tracer out.
In some centres, the radiopharmacy is physics-led, which makes sense on the side of strict radiation protection rules, but not on the side of strict pharmaceutical rules. And talking of radiation protection, physicists are required by law to be involved in radionuclide therapies - we advise on radiation protection issues from 'don't sit next to pregnant women for a few hours' to comprehensive rules on handling thyroid cancer patients, who are treated with a high enough activity of radioiodine that they have to spend three or four days as an in-patient in a lead-shielded room.
I shall now go back to sorting out my music collection, and hopefully very soon to bed. *yawns*