32 lectures (48 hours)

I. Introduction of nuclear medicine
1. What is nuclear medicine?
2. History of nuclear medicine
3. Current practice of nuclear medicine
4. Roles played by a medical physicist in nuclear medicine

II. Radionuclide and radiopharmaceutical production
1. Nuclear decay
2. Radionuclides suitable for nuclear medicine
3. Reactor-produced radionuclides
4. Cyclotron-produced radionuclides
5. Generator-produced radionuclides
6. Radiopharmaceutical preparation

III. Detection of radiation
1. Interaction of charged particles with matter
2. Interaction of neutrons with matter
2. Interaction of photons with matter
3. Attenuation and scatter of photon beam in medium
4. Gas-filled detectors (dose calibrator, Geiger-Muller counter, etc)
5. Scintillation detectors (gamma camera, PET scanner, well counter, etc)
6. Semiconductor detectors

IV. Gamma camera
1. Major components (NaI (Tl) detector, collimator, electronics, etc)
2. Detection limitations (nonuniformity, nonlinearity, etc)
3. Parallel-hole, converging-beam and pinhole collimators
4. Type of gamma cameras and their clinical applications
5. Basic performance characteristics and their measurements (spatial resolution, uniformity, linearity, energy resolution, counting rate, detection efficiency)

V. Image quality in nuclear medicine
1. Basic methods for evaluating image quality
2. Spatial resolution
3. Contrast (Fourier transform, MTF, etc)
4. Noise
5. Artifacts
6. Observer performance study (C-D, ROC, etc)

Course Approval Form
Date: July 2004

Revised
August 2004