The main emphasis of the department is on patient and education. No dedicated space for clinical nuclear medicine research. The facility and equipment is excellent. The division has maintained a record of sustained productivity in scholarly activities and research every year. Our past publications have included almost every system or areas of the body including cardiovascular nuclear medicine, radionuclide therapy, GIT nuclear medicine, CNS, pulmonary system, genito-urinary system, skeletal system, oncological applications and dual photon or dual energy x-ray absorptiometry for diagnosis of osteoporosis. Our most recent clinical papers and publications are related to positron emission tomography and gastric emptying studies.

Fundamental and translational nuclear medicine research is conducted at the Research Service at the MU-affiliated Truman Memorial VA Hospital by several basic scientists and researchers. This research is primarily focused on developing and assessing novel radiopharmaceuticals for molecular imaging and targeted radiotherapeutic agents for treatment of human cancers. The space utilized for Nuclear Medicine Radiopharmaceutical Sciences research includes the Biomolecular Imaging Center (BIC), which houses offices for faculty and trainees and laboratories for synthesis and characterization of radiolabeled compounds for imaging and/or therapeutic studies in animal models. The BIC is located in 6,500 sq. ft. of contiguous space and equipped with state-of-the-art micro-imaging instrumentation. The imaging instrumentation in the BIC includes a Philips Mosaic Small Animal PET system, a Siemens/CTI Micro-SPECT/CT instrument, a Siemans/CTI Micro-CT instrument, an In Vivo Fluorescence/Bioluminescence instrument (Xenogen Corp. IVIS 200 series), and a 7T Micro-MRI instrument (Varian). All instruments are digitally linked to provide capabilities for fusion of anatomical and functional images. Three-dimension volume rendering and data visualization is accomplished using the Amira graphics software platform from TGS, Inc. The capabilities of the BIC provide nuclear medicine researchers outstanding capabilities for performing non-invasive imaging studies on normal and diseased animal models and for development and assessment of novel radiolabeled bioconjugates for molecular imaging and therapeutic applications.