The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio says its program that trains resident physicians in nuclear medicine has accredited through 2014 by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
Health Science Center officials say the program received an exemplary rating from the council, which oversees the accreditation of post-medical doctor training programs in the United States.
The Nuclear Medicine Residency Program is part of the Health Science Center’s Department of Radiology at its School of Medicine. Its training curriculum is integrated with the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium, which trains military physicians in nuclear medicine.
Nuclear medicine refers to imaging and procedures, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and radiotherapy, that use radioactive material to diagnose and treat a host of diseases, including cancer.
The local residency program trains a maximum of four nuclear medicine residents. This rigorous three-year program is one of 57 ACGME-accredited residency programs that will train more than 700 residents nationwide this academic year.
Darlene Metter, professor and vice chair of clinical education in the Department of Radiology, directs the Nuclear Medicine Residency Program. Metter has been instrumental in the program’s design and implementation at participating sites including Brooke Army Medical Center, Wilford Hall Medical Center, University Health System and the Texas Cancer Clinic.
The Health Science Center is the leading research institution for San Antonio and South Texas. It is one of the major health sciences universities in the world.
Showing posts with label Nuclear medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear medicine. Show all posts
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Iris QA Announces New Nuclear Medicine (NM) Tool Kit for Nuclear Medicine Imaging Systems
IRIS QA, LLC, a leader in the development of software based analysis tools for the CT, MR and NM imaging systems, announces the launch of a new Nuclear Medicine (NM) Took Kit application which provides a simple windows based interface that supports DICOM 3.0 image data.
A single page report is generated for each analysis which contains information about the following: the site, imaging system, data acquisition parameters, test results along with a thumbnail image of the processed data.
The processing tools for the following NEMA tests are included: Intrinsic spatial resolution, Intrinsic spatial linearity, Multiple window spatial registration, System spatial resolution with scatter, System spatial resolution without scatter, SPECT reconstructed spatial resolution without scatter and SPECT reconstructed spatial resolution with scatter.
Additional SPECT analysis tools are available for the SpecphanTM QC phantom. This package can be used as a companion product with IRIS QA's CT AutoQA Lite package for providing a comprehensive analysis for CT and SPECT/CT imaging systems.
The initial release of the CT tool took place in the late 1980's as PC/AutoQA (The Iris, Inc.), which was the first automated QA program commercially available for CT.
IRIS QA'a research and development team of senior scientists are constantly working to stay at the forefront of QA/QC testing to provide medical facilities the best software and services available.
Services include Acceptance testing and annual systems testing to fulfill ACR accreditation requirement for CT, MR and NM imaging equipment as well as support to sites applying for ACR accreditation or re-accreditation by collecting the phantom data and completing the annual system report.
A single page report is generated for each analysis which contains information about the following: the site, imaging system, data acquisition parameters, test results along with a thumbnail image of the processed data.
The processing tools for the following NEMA tests are included: Intrinsic spatial resolution, Intrinsic spatial linearity, Multiple window spatial registration, System spatial resolution with scatter, System spatial resolution without scatter, SPECT reconstructed spatial resolution without scatter and SPECT reconstructed spatial resolution with scatter.
Additional SPECT analysis tools are available for the SpecphanTM QC phantom. This package can be used as a companion product with IRIS QA's CT AutoQA Lite package for providing a comprehensive analysis for CT and SPECT/CT imaging systems.
The initial release of the CT tool took place in the late 1980's as PC/AutoQA (The Iris, Inc.), which was the first automated QA program commercially available for CT.
IRIS QA'a research and development team of senior scientists are constantly working to stay at the forefront of QA/QC testing to provide medical facilities the best software and services available.
Services include Acceptance testing and annual systems testing to fulfill ACR accreditation requirement for CT, MR and NM imaging equipment as well as support to sites applying for ACR accreditation or re-accreditation by collecting the phantom data and completing the annual system report.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
A new face of nuclear medicine
Six thousand people each year pass through the glass doors off Ruskin Avenue in Ottawa, walk past the turkey burgers and beef Stroganoff at Tickers cafeteria, and go upstairs to have radioactive dye injected into their arms.
At the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, they will wait as the dye - actually a colourless liquid - circulates and reaches their hearts.
There, in the muscles of the heart, it will give off radiation in patterns that tell a doctor whether the heart is able to pump properly. It's a picture, painted in gamma rays shooting out from the heart cells.
Rob de Kemp points at one dull area in an otherwise bright image. He's the chief physicist in the department making these images.
``This one might be a little bit of disease. You see there's a lower intensity (of colour) there at the top? So there's been a little less rubidium trapped in the heart muscle.''
Rubidium is a radioactive ``dye.'' If it's not reaching some of the heart muscle, then blood isn't, either. Starved for oxygen and nutrients, that muscle can't pump well.
``That's what they're looking for in the scans - regions where there's less blood flow,'' de Kemp explains.
The shutdown of the aging NRU reactor at Chalk River has cut off the supply of the main radioactive material the Heart Institute uses, called technetium-99.
But as one supply is squeezed, other materials, including this rubidium dye, can sometimes take its place.
In the institute's basement, there's a machine with a name like a carnival ride - the cyclotron - that produces medical isotopes (radioactive atoms) without a nuclear reactor.
To anyone who has toured a nuclear reactor building, the contrast is startling. Reactors are huge machines in earthquake-proof buildings running 24 hours a day, surrounded by layer upon layer of security and shutdown systems, and with radioactive waste that will last for millennia.
The cyclotron at the Heart Institute is a big metal box in a room that measures about eight by 10 metres. You can walk right up to it safely while it's running.
At night, the staff just turn it off and go home.
``The isotopes emit radiation. They emit in this case gamma rays, which the camera can detect. Some cameras get a three-dimensional view of the heart showing where there is normal blood flow and where there is reduced blood flow due to a blockage or a narrowing in the coronary arteries,'' de Kemp says.
The ``dye'' itself is a liquid - radioactive material dissolved in salt water. The dye is injected through a needle, and after a few minutes of travel through the body it arrives at the heart.
This test is far easier than the alternative - sticking a catheter in through a thigh artery, sliding it up to the heart, and releasing material that can produce X-rays of the heart.
About 80 per cent of what the Heart Institute uses, traditionally, is technetium-99, made from radioactive material from Chalk River. That supply is shut down for now, though there are reduced amounts available from other parts of the world.
There's a great deal of current research into better ways to produce technetium, says Dr. Terrence Ruddy, chief of cardiology at the institute.
``On the other hand, say it doesn't work out (because of shortages), there's a lot of work going into alternatives,'' such as iodine, which comes from a cyclotron.
Rubidium is a major alternative to technetium, and it needs no nuclear reactor. The Heart Institute buys radioactive strontium from a cyclotron in Vancouver, and converts it to rubidium. The ``generator'' that does this is a bedside box the size of a photocopier.
Indium is used fairly rarely, mostly to make images of infected or inflamed areas. For thyroid images, and some other parts of the body, there's radioactive iodine. And the Heart Institute now uses a lot of thallium for heart images.
And as well as the isotopes - which are radioactive atoms - comes a radioactive molecule made at the Heart Institute called sodium fluoride. That's sodium bonded with a radioactive fluorine atom.
``The sodium fluoride test is also one that we will probably make available to patients soon, either here or at the Ottawa Hospital, which also has a PET scanner,'' de Kemp says. It's used for bone scans to detect suspected cancer.
They can make four types of radioactive isotopes in Ottawa, of which fluorine is the most useful for medical images.
And if Ottawa heart patients didn't have these radioactive dyes?
``The alternative would be more invasive tests - more of these procedures where we put catheters up into your leg and injected X-ray dye,'' de Kemp says.
``Puncturing an artery is not a minor surgery. The costs of that are also much, much higher than nuclear medicine where they might be here for an hour - in and out, and they have their diagnosis.''
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
At the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, they will wait as the dye - actually a colourless liquid - circulates and reaches their hearts.
There, in the muscles of the heart, it will give off radiation in patterns that tell a doctor whether the heart is able to pump properly. It's a picture, painted in gamma rays shooting out from the heart cells.
Rob de Kemp points at one dull area in an otherwise bright image. He's the chief physicist in the department making these images.
``This one might be a little bit of disease. You see there's a lower intensity (of colour) there at the top? So there's been a little less rubidium trapped in the heart muscle.''
Rubidium is a radioactive ``dye.'' If it's not reaching some of the heart muscle, then blood isn't, either. Starved for oxygen and nutrients, that muscle can't pump well.
``That's what they're looking for in the scans - regions where there's less blood flow,'' de Kemp explains.
The shutdown of the aging NRU reactor at Chalk River has cut off the supply of the main radioactive material the Heart Institute uses, called technetium-99.
But as one supply is squeezed, other materials, including this rubidium dye, can sometimes take its place.
In the institute's basement, there's a machine with a name like a carnival ride - the cyclotron - that produces medical isotopes (radioactive atoms) without a nuclear reactor.
To anyone who has toured a nuclear reactor building, the contrast is startling. Reactors are huge machines in earthquake-proof buildings running 24 hours a day, surrounded by layer upon layer of security and shutdown systems, and with radioactive waste that will last for millennia.
The cyclotron at the Heart Institute is a big metal box in a room that measures about eight by 10 metres. You can walk right up to it safely while it's running.
At night, the staff just turn it off and go home.
``The isotopes emit radiation. They emit in this case gamma rays, which the camera can detect. Some cameras get a three-dimensional view of the heart showing where there is normal blood flow and where there is reduced blood flow due to a blockage or a narrowing in the coronary arteries,'' de Kemp says.
The ``dye'' itself is a liquid - radioactive material dissolved in salt water. The dye is injected through a needle, and after a few minutes of travel through the body it arrives at the heart.
This test is far easier than the alternative - sticking a catheter in through a thigh artery, sliding it up to the heart, and releasing material that can produce X-rays of the heart.
About 80 per cent of what the Heart Institute uses, traditionally, is technetium-99, made from radioactive material from Chalk River. That supply is shut down for now, though there are reduced amounts available from other parts of the world.
There's a great deal of current research into better ways to produce technetium, says Dr. Terrence Ruddy, chief of cardiology at the institute.
``On the other hand, say it doesn't work out (because of shortages), there's a lot of work going into alternatives,'' such as iodine, which comes from a cyclotron.
Rubidium is a major alternative to technetium, and it needs no nuclear reactor. The Heart Institute buys radioactive strontium from a cyclotron in Vancouver, and converts it to rubidium. The ``generator'' that does this is a bedside box the size of a photocopier.
Indium is used fairly rarely, mostly to make images of infected or inflamed areas. For thyroid images, and some other parts of the body, there's radioactive iodine. And the Heart Institute now uses a lot of thallium for heart images.
And as well as the isotopes - which are radioactive atoms - comes a radioactive molecule made at the Heart Institute called sodium fluoride. That's sodium bonded with a radioactive fluorine atom.
``The sodium fluoride test is also one that we will probably make available to patients soon, either here or at the Ottawa Hospital, which also has a PET scanner,'' de Kemp says. It's used for bone scans to detect suspected cancer.
They can make four types of radioactive isotopes in Ottawa, of which fluorine is the most useful for medical images.
And if Ottawa heart patients didn't have these radioactive dyes?
``The alternative would be more invasive tests - more of these procedures where we put catheters up into your leg and injected X-ray dye,'' de Kemp says.
``Puncturing an artery is not a minor surgery. The costs of that are also much, much higher than nuclear medicine where they might be here for an hour - in and out, and they have their diagnosis.''
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
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