RESEARCH FIELD

Nuclear Medicine Research

Nuclear medicine research develops and applies radioactive tracers for diagnostic imaging and targeted therapy of disease, primarily cancer but also cardiac, neurological, and infectious conditions. Positron emission tomography using short-lived positron emitters provides whole-body maps of metabolic activity, receptor expression, or amyloid plaque burden in Alzheimer's disease with extraordinary sensitivity. SPECT with technetium-99m or iodine-123 compounds enables functional imaging of perfusion, ventilation, and thyroid. The theranostic paradigm — using the same molecular vector for both imaging and therapy — has transformed oncology: lutetium-177 DOTATATE for somatostatin receptor-positive neuroendocrine tumours and lutetium-177 PSMA-617 for metastatic prostate cancer are landmark approvals. Research priorities include novel radiopharmaceutical design, alpha-particle emitters for targeted alpha therapy, radiomics AI extraction of quantitative features from nuclear medicine images, and patient-specific dosimetry. Funding sources include NIH NCI, cancer foundations, and the rapidly growing nuclear medicine biotechnology sector.