“How will nuclear medicine evolve in the future?”

Nobody knows the future for sure! The optimistic view of nuclear medicine is that it will continue to evolve as an integral part of patient diagnosis and therapy. Proponents of Nuclear Medicine point particularly to theranostic precedures that are effective, relatively new, and seem definitely to be helping propel the field forward in areas such as diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer (the most common though not the most fatal cancer of men) and neuroendocrine cancers, which are less common but also can be treated with usually low risks and good outcomes. Isotopes to help with diagnosis of dementia continue to evolve and are also an area of potential growth and development for the field. The more pessimistic view is that what used to be the Society of Nuclear Medicine, now called the SNMMI for Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging considered fairly recently merging with Radiology, which would have effectively eliminated Nuclear Medicine as a separate entity. Also, there are very few individual practitioners of Nuclear Medicine surviving; nearly all nuclear medicine is practiced as an often underrecognized or underpromoted portion of a hospital or University Radiology Department. If you are 47 years-old and qualified to work in the nuclear medicine field, or thinking of becoming qualified, the future is not so bleak in that not so many people are going into it that it is overcrowded. The nuclear physicians and technologists tend to be more patient oriented and if that is your attitude it can be a wonderful and rewarding field to work in.