Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses safe, painless, and cost-effective techniques both to image the body and treat disease. Nuclear medicine imaging is unique in that it documents organ function and structure, in contrast to diagnostic radiology, which is based upon anatomy. It is a way to gather medical information that may otherwise be unavailable, require surgery, or necessitate more invasive and expensive diagnostic tests.

Today, nuclear medicine offers procedures that are helpful to a broad span of medical specialties, from pediatrics to cardiology to psychiatry. As an integral part of patient care, nuclear medicine is used in the diagnosis, management, and treatment of serious diseases. Nuclear medicine imaging procedures often identify abnormalities very early in the progression of a disease -long before some medical problems are apparent with other diagnostic tests. This early detection allows a disease to be treated early in its course when there may be a more successful prognosis.