Positron emission tomography (PET) is a nuclear medication imaging approach. This type of scan offers details about metabolic exercise, how your body’s organ programs operate and how quickly cells grow. At Greenwich Hospital, PET and CT ( computed tomography ) expertise is mixed in the same scanning tools for the best diagnostic accuracy.
Because your radiation exposure is low, you will not feel any results and may be able to go home quickly after your scan is completed. However, you need to drink loads of fluids afterwards to flush the radioactive medicine out of your physique. All traces of the radio-tracer ought to depart your body naturally round three hours after it has been given to you.
When the scan is finished, you may need to stay on the desk whereas a physician appears on the pictures. If they don’t seem to be clear, you may want another scan. The photographs are reconstructed by computer analysis. Modern machines usually use a CT (computer tomography) X-ray scan which is carried out on a affected person at the similar time in the same machine. You should lie quietly and still because the scanning desk moves by means of the scanner ‘ring’. The scanner detects the gamma rays launched by the radioactive material that has localised within the space of your physique being investigated, and makes use of it to create pictures of your internal body buildings.
While some imaging scans akin to CT and MRI isolate natural anatomic changes within the body, PET and SPECT are capable of detecting areas of molecular biology element (even previous to anatomic change). PET scanning does this using radiolabelled molecular probes that have completely different rates of uptake relying on the kind and performance of tissue involved. Changing of regional blood flow in varied anatomic buildings (as a measure of the injected positron emitter) might be visualized and comparatively quantified with a PET scan.