Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The most common gamma emitter used in medical applications is the nuclear isomer technetium-99m which emits gamma rays in the same energy range as diagnostic X-rays. When this radionuclide tracer is administered to a patient, a gamma camera can be used to form an image of the radioisotope's distribution by detecting the gamma radiation emitted ...
Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a nuclear medicine imaging technique using gamma rays. It may be used with any gamma-emitting isotope, including 99m Tc. In the use of technetium-99m, the radioisotope is administered to the patient and the escaping gamma rays are incident upon a moving gamma camera which computes and ...
A gamma camera (γ-camera), also called a scintillation camera or Anger camera, is a device used to image gamma radiation emitting radioisotopes, a technique known as scintigraphy. The applications of scintigraphy include early drug development and nuclear medical imaging to view and analyse images of the human body or the distribution of ...
It has a half-life of 30 years, and decays by beta decay without gamma ray emission to a metastable state of barium-137 (137m Ba). Barium-137m has a half-life of a 2.6 minutes and is responsible for all of the gamma ray emission in this decay sequence. The ground state of barium-137 is stable. The photon energy (energy of a single gamma ray) of ...
Scintigraphy (from Latin scintilla, "spark"), also known as a gamma scan, is a diagnostic test in nuclear medicine, where radioisotopes attached to drugs that travel to a specific organ or tissue (radiopharmaceuticals) are taken internally and the emitted gamma radiation is captured by gamma cameras, which are external detectors that form two-dimensional images [1] in a process similar to the ...
SPECT is similar to PET in its use of radioactive tracer material and detection of gamma rays. In contrast with PET, the tracers used in SPECT emit gamma radiation that is measured directly, whereas PET tracers emit positrons that annihilate with electrons up to a few millimeters away, causing two gamma photons to be emitted in opposite directions.
Cobalt therapy is the medical use of gamma rays from the radioisotope cobalt-60 to treat conditions such as cancer.Beginning in the 1950s, cobalt-60 was widely used in external beam radiotherapy (teletherapy) machines, which produced a beam of gamma rays which was directed into the patient's body to kill tumor tissue.
Cobalt units use radiation from cobalt-60, which emits two gamma rays at energies of 1.17 and 1.33 MeV, a dichromatic beam with an average energy of 1.25 MeV. The role of the cobalt unit has largely been replaced by the linear accelerator, which can generate higher energy radiation.