Is a branch of medicine that uses isotopes to diagnose and treat certain diseases. This area uses isotopes that have very short half-lives which means they decay rapidly into a harmless material. Often, the injected radioactive material is inside the body for a very short time which means that the total dose of radiation is small. The radiation received is similar, and sometimes even less than many other types of x-ray procedures.
In conventional x-ray procedures, the radiation comes out of a machine and passes through the patient’s body. In nuclear medicine procedures, a radioactive material is introduced into the patient’s body (usually by injection), and is detected by a machine called a gamma camera.
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