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Nuclear medicine
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| A patient receiving an MRI Scan |
ANSTO plays an important role in the nuclear medicine industry supplying more than 500,000 patient doses of radiopharmaceuticals each year.
In September 2012, it was announced by the Commonwealth Government that ANSTO's role would be enhanced with a plan to build an export scale nuclear medicine manufacturing plant, which will secure Australia’s ability to produce Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) and increase capacity to meet a significant proportion of the world’s needs.
Read more about this announcement here:
- ANSTO to help supply the world with nuclear medicine
- Australian plans to combat looming nuclear medicine supply crisis
- Visit ANSTO Health
Imaging organs and looking inside the human body was never thought possible a few decades ago, yet now nuclear medicine is one of the most relied upon medical techniques to diagnose and treat major disease.
Nuclear medicine production is a core business of ANSTO, which provides 85 per cent of the nuclear medicines that Australian hospitals use to diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders and other conditions.
In hospitals, doctors inject a small, safe amount of a slightly (low-level) radioactive tracer into a patient. The tracer is produced at ANSTO, and is picked up by a special gamma camera in the hospital, which produces an image showing organ activity. The doctor can then determine if an organ is malfunctioning or cancer is growing, and determine the appropriate treatment.
As with many state-of-the-art medical technologies, nuclear medicine is evolving all the time, allowing doctors to improve diagnosis and treatment approaches at even earlier stages of disease development, and ultimately saving more lives.
ANSTO's medical products
ANSTO's main nuclear medicine product is technetium-99m which is used in the majority of nuclear medicine imaging procedures, such as Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT).
It also supplies reactor-produced isotopes (e.g., samarium-153, yttrium-90, chromium-51 and iodine-131) as well a variety of cyclotron-produced nuclear medicines(e.g., fluorine-18, iodine-123, gallium-67 and thallium-201) that are produced in cyclotrons.
In addition to nuclear medicine production, ANSTO also conducts important scientific medical research, including developing new medicines and tracers that could further enhance the diagnostic and treatment capabilities of doctors. This area of research is being conducted by ANSTO LifeSciences.
More information
Read our comprehensive brochure: Nuclear medicine - your questions answered.