Statement from the Division Director:

The Division of Nuclear Medicine takes pride in actively engaging in all areas of academic nuclear medicine, including patient care, education and research. While education and research are important parts of our mission, we believe excellence in patient care is vital to our high quality teaching programs and clinical research. Being part of an academic center, our strong involvement in teaching, scholarly activities, and research has helped us to stay at the cutting edge that is so important for providing outstanding patient care expected from a center such as ours.

Ours is the only facility in our service area in the state where nuclear medicine services are provided by dedicated, full-time, fellowship-trained, board-certified nuclear medicine physicians certified by the American Board of Nuclear Medicine (ABNM). The faculty is highly experienced, some with over fifteen to twenty-five years of experience in nuclear medicine, numerous publications and presentations at national and international meetings.
 
In our practice, the patient’s interests come first. Resident education and other academic activities are very important, but not at the cost of patient care. We work hard to provide the best possible services in all areas of clinical nuclear medicine with a strong emphasis on cardiovascular nuclear medicine (also known as nuclear cardiology), oncological applications, and radionuclide therapy.
 
We provide comprehensive services in all areas, including studies of the central nervous system, CSF, gastrointestinal tract, hepatobiliary system, renal and genitourinary tract, organ transplants, lymphatic system, endocrine organs (such as thyroid gland, parathyroid gland, adrenal glands), skeletal system and orthopedic applications. In addition, we have been providing bone density studies (DEXA) for our all UMHC patients since introduction of this modality nearly twenty years ago.
 
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a provided using dedicated PET scanner (ACCEL with LSO). We provide PET studies for diagnosis and staging of all useful or approved neoplastic indications. Other PET studies include brain PET for dementia and epilepsy, and cardiac PET for myocardial viability determination.
 
We are constantly trying to find new ways to study body organs and disease process and are always available for consult with the referring physicians in solving unique and difficult diagnostic problems. A state-of-the-art physical facility and equipment are available for nuclear medicine services at the University of Missouri Health Care. The equipment includes several SPECT gamma cameras and computers for image acquisition, processing and display. GE-Centricity (PACS) is available throughout our institution for image display, review and correlation.