A green liquid in a capsule that is exhaling green visible gas Nuclear Imaging works on the principle of radiation (which is invisible by the way) and how to detect radiation. A radioisotope tracer is inserted into a chemical prevalent in your body like glucose. It consists of …show more content…
A half life is the time taken for a substance to decay to half its original mass and a half life of 110 min allows the radioactive isotope to decay from your body rapidly enough to minimalise the dosage of radiation that is received by the patient. However the 110 minute half-life is supplementary for the storage of the isotope and will allow for it to sustain its radioactivity during the time-consuming process of a PET Scan. The radioactive tracer consists of fluoride-18 chemically bonded with glucose, which is the carrier molecule and is used because glucose is normally found in the …show more content…
An example would be radiotherapy which works on radiation’s ability to kill living cells. When radiation, such as beta radiation enter a living cell it donates energy to nearby atoms and molecules which allows electrons other than those on the outer orbit to be released. This makes the atoms very unstable (Radicals) and are so reactive they last only milliseconds. Radicals react with nearby molecules in a limited amount of time, resulting in breakage of chemical bonds. The breakage of chemical bonds could include breaking strands of DNA of which if two strands break the repairs are difficult and full of fault. These potential mis-repairs result in induction of mutations, chromosome aberrations, or cell. Before scratching your heads, let’s look at how this principle is put to use. The photo below explains the principle behind radiotherapu:
Aside the financial benefits of nuclear medicine, one thing we must understand is that nuclear medicine isn’t as danger as we imagine or are forced to think by the media. As “a patient having a lung scan is exposed to the same dose of radiation they would receive from eight return air flights between Sydney and London,” ANSTO. Below is some statistics on the radiation consumed by an average individual:
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To add to this, even if a greater dose of radiation is absorbed around