Radiopharmaceuticals For Pet

Abstract

Radiopharmaceuticals are radioactive drugs that can be used either for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes in nuclear medicine applications. Radiopharmaceuticals consist of two parts: a "ligand" directs the radioactivity to the target site (disease sites, organs) of the body and a "radionuclide" that emits detectable signals from outside the organism for visualiza-tion or delivers therapeutic levels of radiation dose to target sites. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a non-invasive nuclear medicine imaging technique using positron-emitting radionuclides coupled to specific ligands (PET radiopharma-ceuticals). The presented review provides general information on PET radiopharmaceuticals for three major fields (oncology, cardiology, and neurology).