subject: The Gamma Camera Solution [print this page] If you have ever been to the hospital with sort of internal problem, or even the doctor's office for the same reason, you may have had pictures taken of your insides with a gamma camera. Many times, a gamma camera looks very similar to an MRI machine. It is used to take pictures off your insides so that the doctor can try to discover what is wrong with you that he has not been able to detect yet.
You may well recognize if you have been involved in a gamma camera picture if you were asked to drink a solution a few hours before the scheduled time to take the pictures. The solution that you are asked to drink contains some low level radiation.
After drinking the solution, you are asked to wait a few hours before they take the pictures because it takes that amount of time to travel throughout the body. Once the time has passed, you will be asked to go back to the room with the gamma camera.
There, they will take your picture over and over to get different views and different angles. The solution that they have you drink in essence highlights the internal parts of the body. This then makes those parts of the body much more visible in a gamma camera picture.
The medical field is always looking for better ways to detect the issues of the human body and to solve those problems. In that quest, machines are invented to aid in that quest. Over time, they are improved upon and used to springboard into new machines.
The gamma camera is a great example of this. It was invented originally by a man named Hal Anger back in the late 1950's. He was a genius and a pioneer in the world of nuclear medicine. His invention has continually been improved upon to make a much better gamma camera today than what they had back then. The advancement of society has made the improvement of the gamma camera possible.
With the improvement of the gamma camera came better results. One of the most notable is the improvement in breast cancer detection. The gamma camera is now able to detect a very small amount of cancer, early in the game. In fact, the size of the tumor that it can detect is around 4mm. That is one big advancement in small detection of breast cancer.
