Radiology-Nuclear Medicine Diagnostic Imaging: A Correlative Approach

“The practice of nuclear medicine has undergone significant advances during the last several decades, mainly due to its integration with radiology. The incorporation of cross-sectional imaging into nuclear medicine studies ensures that nuclear medicine maintains its role in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and remains an integral part of the imaging world. In several nuclear medicine studies, imaging is no longer offered without incorporation of anatomic correlation. This has been introduced as SPECT/CT, PET/CT, PET/MRI, and other new integrated imaging techniques. Through the advent of combined nuclear medicine/radiology imaging modalities, nuclear medicine has placed an increased emphasis on incorporating radiological training, especially CT, into its curriculum. Moreover, nuclear medicine residents and physicians must advance their diagnostic skills to be able to interpret combined imaging modalities and correlate radiologic findings with those of scintigraphic imaging. In fact, familiarity with and understanding radiologic features of diseases is becoming imperative for practicing nuclear physicians given the current explosion of radiologic modalities for diagnostic, prognostic and predictive indications. Even in the market of medical imaging, nuclear medicine physicians with no background in diagnostic radiology are becoming less attractive to imaging practices. To address these needs, remarkable attempts have been made to establish combined nuclear medicine/radiology training. However, these attempts are still in the early stages of implementation. Through rapid growth of combined imaging techniques, it is imperative that the nuclear medicine community become familiar with both clinical and research correlates of radiologic techniques and the corresponding nuclear medicine studies. On the other hand, in a remarkable number of diagnostic imaging practices, the nuclear medicine studies are read and interpreted by radiologists, who do not have in-depth training in nuclear medicine. The training requirements of radiologists reading nuclear medicine studies have not been thoroughly addressed and the required skills are difficult to acquire without an appropriately and specifically designed textbook of nuclear medicine – radiology correlative imaging. No such textbook exists to fulfill these needs, as most nuclear medicine textbooks are not designed to provide satisfactory teaching on correlative radiologic modalities”–