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Interest in performing dosimetry for clinical radiopharmaceutical therapy procedures has grown in recent years. Several approved therapies include dosimetry in the Food and Drug Administration-approved label instructions, and other therapies are best used under a patient-tailored paradigm. This paper, which is a product of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Dosimetry Task Force, presents motivations and general workflows for radiopharmaceutical therapy dosimetry, as well as existing strategies for obtaining reimbursement for clinical activities related to dosimetry. Several specific patient examples are provided, including suggested codes for reimbursement. In addition to current reimbursement approaches, key dosimetry services that are not supported under the current coding structure are presented and suggested as areas of focus in the coming years., (© 2021 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.)

The diagnosis and treatment of patients with cancer requires access to imaging to ensure accurate management decisions and optimal outcomes. Our global assessment of imaging and nuclear medicine resources identified substantial shortages in equipment and workforce, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). A microsimulation model of 11 cancers showed that the scale-up of imaging would avert 3·2% (2·46 million) of all 76·0 million deaths caused by the modelled cancers worldwide between 2020 and 2030, saving 54·92 million life-years. A comprehensive scale-up of imaging, treatment, and care quality would avert 9·55 million (12·5%) of all cancer deaths caused by the modelled cancers worldwide, saving 232·30 million life-years. Scale-up of imaging would cost US$6·84 billion in 2020-30 but yield lifetime productivity gains of $1·23 trillion worldwide, a net return of $179·19 per $1 invested. Combining the scale-up of imaging, treatment, and quality of care would provide a net benefit of $2·66 trillion and a net return of $12·43 per $1 invested. With the use of a conservative approach regarding human capital, the scale-up of imaging alone would provide a net benefit of $209·46 billion and net return of $31·61 per $1 invested. With comprehensive scale-up, the worldwide net benefit using the human capital approach is $340·42 billion and the return per dollar invested is $2·46. These improved health and economic outcomes hold true across all geographical regions. We propose actions and investments that would enhance access to imaging equipment, workforce capacity, digital technology, radiopharmaceuticals, and research and training programmes in LMICs, to produce massive health and economic benefits and reduce the burden of cancer globally., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Nuclear medicine has come a long way since 2007 when Adrian Nunn pointed out the approval of radiopharmaceuticals was at an all-time low with all the major radiopharmaceutical agents in use having been approved over 10 years ago. Challenges being the prohibitively high cost of drug development and the large number of drugs failing in clinical trials. Proceed to today where molecular imaging is fast-tracking the drug discovery process by reducing both the time and cost to screen candidates by quantitating the drugs effect on the target and toxicity to normal tissues. Nuclear medicine is now leading medical practice in personalized medicine using the theragnostic approach. Theragnostics is defined as the use of molecular diagnostic techniques in real time to stratify patients to guide treatment decisions such as the choice of drug, the dose of administration, and the timing of drug delivery for a given patient. Enabling visualization and quantitation of in vivo function of the whole body and thus patient heterogeneity and variability informs the physician on how to treat an individual patient. Recent successes such as the Food and Drug Administration approval of Lutathera and NETSPOT have resulted in an increasing number of pharmaceutical companies pursing theragnostics further heightened by the purchase of Advanced Accelerator Applications for 3.9 billion by Novartis and Endocyte, Inc for 2.1 billion. Theragnostics are further aiding drug development by showing which agents are most viable and reducing the overall cost of bringing a drug to clinical trials and regulatory approval. This is indeed a renaissance for nuclear medicine in which the acceptance of imaging to inform and monitor therapy has been embraced and even required by the Food and Drug Administration for the clinical evaluation of targeted therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals showing there is indeed a viable business model for targeted theragnostic radiopharmaceuticals and personalized medicine., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Until recently, it has been challenging to engage Wall Street and large pharmaceutical companies in radiopharmaceutical opportunities. The modest economic prospects of most diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals have not attracted keen interest from the broader business community, despite the rapid advancement of diagnostic imaging capabilities and their increasingly crucial role in the therapeutic process. Similarly, compelling science supporting select radiopharmaceutical therapies in oncology has been overshadowed by the unique challenges posed by this class of drugs and historical commercial failures that serve as sobering reminders of risk. Fortunately, a few notable successes in the targeted radioligand therapeutic space are changing this dynamic, fueling a new flow of investor capital into these technologies and inciting increased merger and acquisition activity that has yielded significant value creation for investors. If the nuclear medicine industry is able to continue to effectively manage historical challenges, then there is significant opportunity for a new and promising wave of radioligand therapies to significantly change the oncology treatment paradigm and elevate the profile of the entire nuclear medicine sector., (© 2019 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.)

Objective: To investigate the correlation between the utilization of nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures and the mortality of women with breast cancer., Subjects and Methods: Based on the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD), we studied female breast cancer patients in 2012 who underwent whole-body bone scan, lymphoscintigraphy, or fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography ( 18 F-FDG PET/CT) for possibly managing breast cancer metastases. The mortality of breast cancer was then followed up in 2017. Multiple linear regression analysis was applied to analyze the correlation between the use of any of these three nuclear medicine procedures and the mortality of breast cancer., Results: For patients with early-stage breast cancer, single lymphoscintigraphy was the most frequently performed nuclear medicine procedure, accounting for 36.4% of all three nuclear medicine procedures. For patients with late-stage breast cancer, single whole-body bone scan was the most frequently performed nuclear medicine procedure, accounting for 67.2% of all three nuclear medicine procedures. Mortality of breast cancer significantly increased with the prevalence of late-stage breast cancer (b=2.87, P=0.001) and significantly decreased in cases in which whole-body bone scan was used (b=-4.28, P=0.003)., Conclusion: The mortality of women with late-stage breast cancer was negatively related to the utilization of whole-body bone scan but not to the utilization of lymphoscintigraphy or the 18 F-FDG PET/CT scan. In women with early-stage breast cancer, no significant correlation existed between breast cancer mortality and the utilization of the above three nuclear medicine procedures.

Rationale and Objectives: The characterization of payments made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, and group purchasing organizations is crucial for assessing potential conflicts of interest and their impact on practice patterns. This study examines the compensation received by general radiologists (GR) in the United States, as well as radiologists in the following five subspecialties: body imaging, neuroradiology, pediatric radiology, nuclear radiology and radiological physics, and vascular and interventional radiology., Materials and Methods: Data were extracted from the Open Payments database for radiology subspecialists in the United States who received installments in calendar year 2015 from pharmaceutical and device manufacturing companies., Results: In 2015, a total of $43,685,052 was paid in 65,507 payments (mean $667/payment; median $32/payment) to radiologists, including 9826 GR, 362 body imaging radiologists, 479 neuroradiologists, 127 pediatric radiologists, 175 physicians in nuclear radiology and radiological physics, and 1584 vascular and interventional radiologists. Payments were unequally distributed across these six major subspecialties of radiology (p < 0.01), with GR receiving the largest number of total payments (44,695), and neuroradiologists receiving significantly higher median payments than any other subspecialty ($80 vs $32 for all radiologists; p < 0.01). Medtronic Neurovascular was the single largest payer to all radiologists combined., Conclusion: Commercial entities make substantial payments to radiologists, with a significant variation in payments made to the different radiology subspecialties. While the largest number of total payments was made to GGR, the highest median payments were made to neuroradiologists, and significant dispersion in these payments was seen across different geographic regions. The impact of these payments on practice patterns remains to be elucidated., (Copyright © 2019 Academic Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The European Commission (EC) funded project Dose Datamed 2 (DDM2) had two objectives: to collect available data on patient doses from the radiodiagnostic procedures (X-ray and nuclear medicine) in Europe, and to facilitate the implementation of the Radiation Protection 154 Guidelines (RP154). Besides the collection of frequency and dose data, two questionnaires were issued to gather information about medical radiological imaging. This article analyses a possible correlation between the collected frequency data, selected variables from the results of the detailed questionnaire and national economic data. Based on a 35 countries dataset, there is no correlation between the gross domestic product (GDP) and the total number of X-ray examinations in a country. However, there is a significant correlation (p < 0.01) between the GDP and the overall CT examination frequency. High income countries perform more CT examinations per inhabitant. That suggests that planar X-ray examinations are replaced by CT examinations., (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The outcomes of a 2011 Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) conference helped shape considerations about what might be the most appropriate pathways for the regulatory and payment considerations of new PET radiopharmaceuticals. As follow-up to that conference, MITA convened a second conference of stakeholders to advise payers on what might be acceptable endpoints for clinical trials to support the coverage of novel PET agents. The conference involved experts on imaging and clinical research, providers of PET services, as well as representatives of interested medical societies, the PET industry, and the regulatory and payer communities. The principal outcome of their deliberations was that it was unrealistic to expect trials of new PET radiopharmaceuticals to directly demonstrate a health benefit. Rather, intermediate outcomes, such as a positive change in patient management, would be more efficient and appropriate., (Copyright © 2013 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The International Atomic Energy Agency's technical cooperation (TC) programme helps Member States in the developing world with limited infrastructure and human resource capacity to harness the potential of nuclear technologies in meeting socioeconomic development challenges. As a part of its human health TC initiatives, the Agency, through the TC mechanism, has the unique role of promoting nuclear medicine applications of fellowships, scientific visits, and training courses, via technology procurement, and in the past decade has contributed nearly $54 million through 180 projects in supporting technology procurement and human resource capacity development among Member States from the developing world (low- and middle-income countries). There has been a growing demand in nuclear medicine TC, particularly in Africa and ex-Soviet Union States where limited infrastructure presently exists, based on cancer and cardiovascular disease management projects. African Member States received the greatest allocation of TC funds in the past 10 years dedicated to building new or rehabilitating obsolete nuclear medicine infrastructure through procurement support of single-photon emission computed tomography machines. Agency support in Asia and Latin America has emphasized human resource capacity building, as Member States in these regions have already acquired positron emission tomography and hybrid modalities (positron emission tomography/computed tomography and single-photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography) in their health systems. The strengthening of national nuclear medicine capacities among Member States across different regions has enabled stronger regional cooperation among developing countries who through the Agency's support and within the framework of regional cooperative agreements are sharing expertise and fostering the sustainability and productive integration of nuclear medicine within their health systems., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: To provide a guideline curriculum covering theoretical and practical aspects of education and training for Medical Physicists in Nuclear Medicine within Europe., Material and Methods: National training programmes of Medical Physics, Radiation Physics and Nuclear Medicine physics from a range of European countries and from North America were reviewed and elements of best practice identified. An independent panel of experts was used to achieve consensus regarding the content of the curriculum., Results: Guidelines have been developed for the specialist theoretical knowledge and practical experience required to practice as a Medical Physicist in Nuclear Medicine in Europe. It is assumed that the precondition for the beginning of the training is a good initial degree in Medical Physics at master level (or equivalent). The Learning Outcomes are categorised using the Knowledge, Skill and Competence approach along the lines recommended by the European Qualifications Framework. The minimum level expected in each topic in the theoretical knowledge and practical experience sections is intended to bring trainees up to the requirements expected of a Medical Physicist entering the field of Nuclear Medicine., Conclusions: This new joint EANM/EFOMP European guideline curriculum is a further step to harmonise specialist training of Medical Physicists in Nuclear Medicine within Europe. It provides a common framework for national Medical Physics societies to develop or benchmark their own curricula. The responsibility for the implementation and accreditation of these standards and guidelines resides within national training and regulatory bodies., (Copyright © 2012 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

There has been a significant increase in cardiac radionuclide imaging over the past decade, leading to a corresponding increase in scrutiny from Federal and private health plans questioning the necessity of these tests. In response to efforts by third-party payers to limit all types of cardiovascular imaging studies, the American College of Cardiology Foundation, in conjunction with other professional societies, developed appropriate use criteria. The goal of this article is to explain how the criteria were created and define the 3 categories of indications: appropriate, inappropriate, and uncertain. Tips for using appropriate use criteria and tables, including a definition of several key terms technologists should be familiar with, will be provided. In addition, reimbursement, benchmark data, and practical considerations for implementation will be discussed. Finally, several tools to aid in calculating appropriateness are suggested. With a basic understanding, the appropriate use criteria are relatively easy to apply. It is important for facilities to begin to voluntarily incorporate them into their practice and document levels of appropriateness now as payers are developing 2 trends that are not favorable for nuclear cardiology: preauthorization and denial of payment for inappropriate studies.

DIS has not yet been implemented in Japan as of 2011. Therefore, even if risk was negligible, medical institutions have to entrust radioactive temporal waste disposal to Japan Radio Isotopes Association (JRIA) in the current situation. To decide whether DIS should be implemented in Japan or not, cost-saving effect of DIS was estimated by comparing the cost that nuclear medical facilities pay. By implementing DIS, the total annual cost for all nuclear medical facilities in Japan is estimated to be decreased to 30 million yen or less from 710 million yen. DIS would save 680 million yen (96%) per year.

The growth of molecular imaging heightens the promise of clinical nuclear medicine as a tool for individualization of patient care and for improvement of health-care outcomes. Together with greater use of integrated structure-function imaging, clinical nuclear medicine reaches beyond traditional specialty borders into diagnostic radiology and oncology. Yet, there are concerns about the future of nuclear medicine, including progressively declining reimbursement, the competitive advantages of diagnostic radiology, limited translation of research accomplishments to clinical diagnostic imaging and patient care, and an insufficient pool of incoming highly qualified nuclear medicine clinicians. Thus, nuclear medicine views itself as being at a critical crossroads. What will be important is for nuclear medicine to be positioned as the quintessential molecular imaging modality more centrally within medical imaging and for the integration of nuclear medicine with primary care specialties to be driven more by patient needs than by specialty needs. In this way, the full potential of nuclear medicine as an effective and efficient tool for improving patient outcomes can be realized.

A survey of the Australasian clinical medical physics and biomedical engineering workforce was carried out in 2009 following on from a similar survey in 2006. 621 positions (equivalent to 575 equivalent full time (EFT) positions) were captured by the survey. Of these 330 EFT were in radiation oncology physics, 45 EFT were in radiology physics, 42 EFT were in nuclear medicine physics, 159 EFT were in biomedical engineering and 29 EFT were attributed to other activities. The survey reviewed the experience profile, the salary levels and the number of vacant positions in the workforce for the different disciplines in each Australian state and in New Zealand. Analysis of the data shows the changes to the workforce over the preceding 3 years and identifies shortfalls in the workforce.

Economic scale of radioisotopes (RI) in Japan is studied in the field of medicine, agriculture and a part of industry. (1) RI is used during medical examination with economic scale by 1.7M$ (million dollars) in 1997 and 0.4M$ in 2005. (2) Economic scale of RI utilization in agriculture is 4M$ for R&D, 127M$ for environmental protection and 1M$ for chronology. RI usage in agriculture is increased five times due to needs at environmental technology lasted after the Kyoto protocol. (3) Indirect economic scale of RI ((85)Kr, (147)Pm, (90)Cr) usage in paper fabrication field in Japan for 2006 is 8432M$.

This study investigates how, in the late 1940s and 1950s, fears of nuclear accidents and nuclear warfare shaped postwar radiobiology. The new and intense forms of radiation generated by nuclear reactor technology, and which would be released in the event of a nuclear war, created concerns about a public-health hazard unprecedented in form and scale. Fears of inadvertent exposure to acute and potentially lethal radiation launched a search for anti-radiation therapies, out of which emerged the new technique of bone marrow transplantation (BMT). This study analyzes the use of BMT first as a research tool to explore the biological effects of ionizing radiation, and then as an adjunct to radiotherapy for the treatment of cancer. In highlighting how BMT became the province of different research and clinical constituencies, this study develops an understanding of the forces and contingencies that shaped its development. Exploring the emergence of BMT and the uses to which it was put, it reveals that BMT remained a technique in the making -- unstable and far from standardized, even as it became both a widely used research tool and rapidly made its way into the clinic. More broadly, it casts new light on one route through which the Manhattan Project influenced postwar radiobiology; it also affords new insights into one means by which radiobiology came to serve the interests of the Cold War state. In its focus on BMT this paper provides a new perspective on the evolving relationship between radiobiology and biomedicine in the postwar period.

Nuclear cardiology is well established in clinical diagnostic algorithms for many years. This is an update 2008 of the first common position paper of the German Association of Nuclear Medicine and the German Association of Cardiology, Heart and Circulation Research published in 2001 aiming at an overview of state-of-the-art scintigraphic methods.

Medical procedures that use ionizing radiation have grown rapidly in volume over the last two decades and constitute a substantial portion of the collective radiation doses to the U.S. population. The purpose of this study is to describe the components of this growth. Summarized claims data from Medicare are used to describe trends for the period 1986-2005; supplemental data from other payers and surveys are used for verification and to describe age distributions of those who have these procedures. A notable trend is the rapid growth of CT and nuclear medicine, with CT volume per fee-for-service Medicare enrollee growing, on average, at 8% per y and nuclear medicine at 7% per y during the period 1986-2005. Cardiac procedures-nuclear medicine and interventional radiology-grew at over 15% per y per fee-for-service enrollee during the same period. The share of nuclear medicine procedures performed in physician offices increased from 10% in 1986 to 55% in 2005; the share of CT in the emergency room increased from 3% in 1992 to 17% in 2005. With this expansion in imaging volumes across practice settings, there is an increased need for radiation safety education of ordering physicians, imaging physicians, and patients, so that adequate consideration is given to radiation risk when determining the appropriateness of a prescribed procedure.

Previous studies have shown the feasibility of using activity-based costing (ABC) in hospital environments. However, many of these studies discuss the general applications of ABC in health-care organizations. This research explores the potential application of ABC to the nuclear medicine unit (NMU) at a teaching hospital. The finding indicates that the current cost averages 236.11 US dollars for all procedures, which is quite different from the costs computed by using ABC. The difference is most significant with positron emission tomography scan, 463 US dollars (an increase of 96%), as well as bone scan and thyroid scan, 114 US dollars (a decrease of 52%). The result of ABC analysis demonstrates that the operational time (machine time and direct labour time) and the cost of drugs have the most influence on cost per procedure. Clearly, to reduce the cost per procedure for the NMU, the reduction in operational time and cost of drugs should be analysed. The result also indicates that ABC can be used to improve resource allocation and management. It can be an important aid in making management decisions, particularly for improving pricing practices by making costing more accurate. It also facilitates the identification of underutilized resources and related costs, leading to cost reduction. The ABC system will also help hospitals control costs, improve the quality and efficiency of the care they provide, and manage their resources better.

Purpose: This study examined financial data reported by Florida hospitals concerning costs, charges, and revenues related to imaging services., Methods: Financial reports to the Florida Hospital Uniform Reporting System by all licensed acute care facilities for fiscal year 2002 were used to calculate four financial indices on a per procedure basis. These included charge, net revenue, operating expense (variable cost), and contribution margin. Analysis, stratified by cost center (imaging modality), tested the effects of bed size, ownership, teaching status, and urban or rural status on the four indices., Results: The mean operating expense and charge per procedure were as follows: computed tomography (CT): $51 and $1565; x-ray and ultrasound: $55 and $410; nuclear medicine (NM): $135 and $1138; and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): $165 and $2048. With all four modalities, for-profit hospitals had higher charges than not-for-profit and public facilities. Excepting NM, however, the difference by ownership disappeared when considering net revenue. Operating expense did not differ by ownership type or bed size., Conclusions: Operating expense (variable cost) per procedure is considerably lower for CT than for MRI. Consequently, when diagnostically equivalent, CT is preferable to MRI in terms of costs for hospitals. If the cost structure of nonhospital imaging is at all similar to hospitals, the profit potential for performing CT and MRI seems to be substantial, which has relevance to the issue of imaging self-referral.

Acute coronary syndromes are a frequent manifestation of coronary artery disease, usually being associated with chest pain and presenting as a medical emergency. Since a considerable number of patients with chest pain, however, have a non cardiac etiology of their pain, properly triaging these patients represents a diagnostic challenge for physicians in the emergency department. As the available diagnostic procedures have limited accuracy, many different diagnostic strategies have been evaluated. Among these, radionuclide myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) at rest or in combination with stress procedures has been investigated in many trials. MPI has been proven to be useful, especially in a patient population with a low to intermediate probability of an ischemic event. Perfusion scintigraphy has a high sensitivity in the detection of myocardial infarction and reveals an excellent negative predictive value, allowing a safe discharge strategy of patients with a negative scan result. Moreover, it enables risk stratification and provides incremental and independent prognostic information regarding short to long term future cardiac adverse events. Several cost effectiveness studies have shown that perfusion imaging leads to lower overall direct costs, mainly by a reduction of unnecessary hospital admissions and diagnostic angiograms, without worsening of the clinical outcome of these patients. As a possible study endpoint, myocardial perfusion imaging in the acute setting enables the quantification of salvaged myocardium and therefore the evaluation of treatment efficacy. Besides perfusion agents, several infarct avid radiopharmaceuticals have been developed, which in part show promising results. However, larger randomized trials evaluating these tracers in clinical settings are needed to warrant routine clinical application.