Overview
Nuclear medicine is an advanced medical specialty that uses small amounts of radioactive materials to diagnose or treat diseases. It’s a valuable tool that can give us information about bodily function. Combined with the anatomic information of traditional imaging, our physicians gain a comprehensive view of what’s going on in your body, helping inform and guide your treatment plan.
At the Cleveland Clinic in Florida Department of Imaging, our team offers state-of-the-art nuclear medicine services. You can trust your care to our skilled and experienced specialists who use the most advanced technology and tools available.
Why Choose Cleveland Clinic Florida?
When you choose Cleveland Clinic in Florida nuclear medicine services, you benefit from:
- Integrated care: As a leading academic center, we offer you expert treatment from subspecialists. Our nuclear medicine physicians collaborate with multiple specialties to provide leading-edge diagnostic imaging and care.
- Advanced technology: We are one of only a few locations in Florida with digital positron emission tomography (PET) CT scanners, which offer lower-dose and better-quality imaging. Our powerful PET CT scanners complete scans in a quicker timeframe than other technologies. This technology allows us to see smaller lesions more clearly. We also offer single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/CT scans, which merge images from SPECT and CT scans to provide more detailed information. These precise images assist the specialists who make diagnoses.
- Access to clinical trial treatments: Nuclear medicine is a rapidly growing field. Our physicians’ clinical trial involvement brings you access to the latest treatments as they become available. We continually improve our approaches, so you receive excellent care.
Services We Offer
Nuclear medicine provides in-depth information about your organ function. Tests like positron emission tomography (PET) scans and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) use small amounts of radioactive substances called radiotracers. As particles such as radio waves pass through your body, they detect and highlight the radiotracer, which collects in parts of the body associated with diseases.
This approach does more than take pictures. It creates images that contain data we can analyze to understand your physiology. Nuclear medicine scans often give us information that we can’t obtain through other imaging techniques such as CT scans or MRIs.
Our physicians provide the full range of nuclear medicine services, including many innovative options not widely available in our geographic region. We can use nuclear medicine to diagnose and treat many diseases, including:
- Cancer: PET CT scans can tell us where your cancer is located and how it’s responding to treatment. We may also use nuclear medicine oncology therapy to treat your cancer by targeting radioactive material to cancer cells.
- Heart conditions: PET CT scans can provide detailed, 3D images of your heart, allowing us to measure blood flow and evaluate heart health. We also use SPECT for detecting and diagnosing coronary artery disease. Our experts provide a full array of advanced cardiovascular imaging techniques.
- Neurological conditions: Nuclear neurology, also called neuromolecular imaging, can provide valuable insights into the physiology of your brain and spinal cord. These techniques are crucial in evaluating many neurological conditions, including finding the location of epileptic seizures and diagnosing dementia.
Nuclear Medicine Therapy
We deliver small amounts of radioactive material to targeted areas in your body. As the field of nuclear medicine continues to advance, we can use these techniques more and more for treatment.
We may use nuclear medicine therapy to treat certain types of cancer. In these therapies, we administer radiotracers specifically designed to target cancer cells. The effect is similar to administering chemotherapy but has higher efficacy and fewer side effects.
Nuclear medicine therapy may treat:
- Hyperthyroidism and differentiated thyroid cancer.
- Liver cancer in collaboration with interventional radiology.
- Prostate cancer.
Nuclear Medicine Scans
We provide the full range of nuclear imaging tests to diagnose conditions including:
- Bone cancer or bone pain.
- Brain tumors, epilepsy, stroke and blood vessel narrowing.
- Cancer of all types, including breast cancer.
- Heart conditions, where we evaluate ischemia, heart muscle viability and ejection fraction.
- Infection and inflammation, including osteomyelitis and abscess.
- Kidney obstructions, kidney stones and kidney failure.
- Liver and gall bladder conditions.
- Lung conditions, including airway or blood flow obstructions.
- Parathyroid conditions.
- Pediatric conditions, such as ureteral obstructions, gastric emptying and reflux or pediatric cancers.
- Stomach conditions, evaluating gastric motility and reflux.
- Thyroid conditions, including hyperthyroidism, goiter or thyroid cancer.
Request an Appointment
Make an appointment at one of our Cleveland Clinic in Florida locations.
