The Nuclear Medicine Department of Sutter Roseville Medical Center offers capabilities that are among the most advanced in the country. Using groundbreaking technology, the department’s nationally recognized doctors and technical team care for patients and consult with physicians throughout Northern California and beyond.

The department is the first in the country to offer the Infinia™ VC Hawkeye® SPECT/CT system with one-inch scored crystal technology. This imaging system joins the Millennium VG Hawkeye™ camera and the mobile PET/CT unit to provide hybrid imaging for advanced patient care. In addition, the unique capabilities of the department include combining single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) image sets with scans from a variety of image sources. An example of this fusion process, also known as co-registration, is combining nuclear SPECT scans with a CT scan obtained from a different facility. Using hybrid technology and co-registration, fusion imaging of three-dimensional scans helps doctors better determine the anatomic location of the functional (metabolic) activity being studied. Such insight can help doctors determine whether the patient should undergo further diagnostic testing, is responding to a course of therapy, requires surgery or other choices for care.

What is nuclear medicine?

Nuclear medicine is a specialty that allows doctors to see what is taking place in specific areas of the body. After the patient receives medicine with a radioactive tracer (radiopharmaceutical), which contains a minute amount of a radioactive material, doctors take images showing where and how the tracer moves through the area of the body in question. All radiopharmaceuticals undergo extensive testing and FDA approval before use and have been determined to be safe.

Diagnosis – In the past few years, discoveries in the nuclear medicine field have been among medicine’s most exciting advances, giving doctors the ability to detect conditions at their earliest stages and to monitor the spread of cancer.

Treatment – Nuclear medicine is also used to provide specialized treatments by delivering medicines to exact locations and allowing doctors to view how a particular area of the body is responding to chemotherapy or other treatments.

For more information about nuclear medicine, visit the section on nuclear scanning test in our health information. Additional information can be found in the patients section of the Society for Nuclear Medicine Web site.

To schedule an appointment, please call (916) 781-1777. Physicians who wish to discuss a case with the nuclear medicine doctors, please call (916) 781-1176. The department is located within Sutter Roseville Medical Center. View Map