There have been several significant advances innuclearmedicine since the publication of the second edition of Practical NuclearMedicine. The last seven years have seen great strides in instrumentation, including new coincidence detectors, the development of a wider variety of crystals, and the advent of combined anatomical/functional imaging devices, including PET/CT and SPECT/CT. PET imaging with 18F-FDG has become a mainstay of many clinical settings, and other radiotracers are finding theirway into the rapidly expanding field of oncologic PET. However, radiopharmaceutical breakthroughs during this period have not been confined to one single imaging modality. Refinements in diagnostic applications of monoclonal antibodies, radiolabeled peptides, neuroreceptors, and a whole spectrum of new molecular.
