The Nuclear Medicine Division at MedUniWien, at the General Hospital of Vienna is one of the largest and most highly performing nuclear medicine departments in Europe. In nuclear medicine, radioactive isotopes, i.e., radioactive chemical bonds, so-called radiopharmaceuticals, are used for diagnosis or therapy. The exams are often called scintigraphy, scan or isotope exam.
The radiation dose is similar to that of radiography, i.e., between one- and ten-fold the natural radiation dose to which all of us are exposed.
A main feature of Nuclear Medicine exams is that they can estimate organ, soft tissue and bone function. This helps to better define the cause of certain diseases, enabling more effective treatment. Other imaging procedures, e.g., radiography or ultrasound, deliver primarily structural information about the organs, soft tissues and bones.
The Division of Nuclear Medicine generally offers conventional imaging procedures, such as thyroid, bone, lung, brain and cardiac exams, as well as SPECT and SPECT/CT for diagnosis of inflammation. Functional imaging procedures, such as SPECT or PET can determine treatment, and therefore potentially influence the choice of effective medications by acting as highly-specific in vivo biomarkers to characterize tumors and their microenvironments.
Central research themes in Nuclear Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna include individualized molecular imaging and treatment of oncologic, cardiovascular, and neuropsychiatric diseases, taking into account immunologic and inflammatory processes. The entire scientific structure adapts to this goal and subdivides the research into very strong interdisciplinary and translational areas, and covers the entire spectrum from biomarker development to clinical use.
1) single photon emission computed tomography (i.e., SPECT)
2) Positron Emission Tomography (i.e., PET)