“How is diagnostic imaging used in nuclear medicine?”

First, nuclear medicine is employed in diagnostic imaging and in internal radiation therapy, the latter usually for cancers. Diagnostic radiology includes both CT (computed tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans, which often give better anatomic resolution than Nuclear Medicine usually does. However, Nuclear Medicine gives functional information (for example, finding cancer cells with special chemicals on their surfaces) not seen with CT and MRI. So combined with the CT or MRI, Nuclear Medicine techniques find, for example, more prostate cancer than any of the techniques mentioned alone.

Edward B. Silberstein, M.A., M.D.