A Practical Guide for Pediatric Nuclear Medicine

This open access book will provide a foundation for the understanding of, and knowledge for a successful routine use of diagnostic Nuclear Medicine procedures in children through expertise and cases provided by representative busy pediatric nuclear medicine facilities. The book highlights important aspects of nuclear medicine in children and the differences between adult and pediatric practice where relevant.

An introductory chapter provides general information detailing the advantages and limitations for performing nuclear medicine tests in children, as well as suggestions on how to approach and provide relevant data to the patients, their parents or next of kin. In the remaining 11 chapters, containing over 115 cases of children evaluated for various clinical indications, procedures are presented and subsequently detailed according to their clinical significance or prevalence based on the clinical experience of the contributors. The book is organized by organ systems, and also includes chapter on oncology and infection/ inflammation. Chapters are formatted to provide information regarding clinical indications, preparation including radiopharmaceutical doses and additional medications, study protocol, study interpretation, correlative imaging. Each chapter will include red flags warning and take home messages sections to emphasize important points. The case format is presented with patient history and then study report and impression.

Based on practices explored by experts at the forefront of this field, the publication is directed at Nuclear Medicine physicians, radiologists, oncologists and clinicians in various pediatric specialties, medical physicists, medical technologists, radiopharmacists, laboratory medicine scientists and researchers.

Zvi Bar Sever is a pediatrician, who completed a nuclear medicine residency at the Joint Program in Nuclear Medicine of Harvard Medical School and a fellowship in pediatric nuclear medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. He established the first dedicated pediatric nuclear medicine department in Israel at Schneider Children’s Medical Center, affiliated with Tel-Aviv University, Sackler School of Medicine. He has chaired this department ever since. Dr. Bar-Sever served as the chair of the EANM pediatric committee for 6 years and as a senior advisor of the committee for 3 years. He was a board member of the SNMMI pediatric imaging council. He is the president of the Israeli Society of Nuclear Medicine, Israel’s national delegate at the EANM and a member of the Ministry of Health National Imaging Council. His main interests within pediatric nuclear medicine include pediatric renography, GI scintigraphy and neuroblastoma imaging.

Francesco Giammarile is a physicianlicensed in Italy and in France, with a post-graduate degree in Nuclear Medicine, a PhD in biophysics and MSc in oncology, pedagogy, hyperbaric medicine and nuclear physics. His main field of interest is nuclear oncology, including diagnosis with special emphasis on hybrid imaging such SPECT/CT and PET/CT, sentinel lymph node and surgical guided procedures, and radionuclide therapy. As professor in the Nuclear Medicine department of the University Hospital in Lyon, he has coordinated several national and international clinical projects and was involved in several research programs funded by the French Government. He served as Congress Chair of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine from 2017 to 2019. Since 2018, he is Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Hybrid Imaging. At present, he works for the International Atomic Energy Agency for the development of Nuclear Medicine in low- to middle-income countries.

Ora Israel is a board certified Nuclear Medicine physician. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Imaging at the Rappaport School of Medicine of the Technion, in Haifa, Israel. She has been director of Nuclear Medicine at the Rambam HealthCare Campus. During her professional career of more than 40 years, her main scientific interests included multimodality tumor imaging, in vivo radionuclide quantitation, and imaging of infection and inflammation. She has been involved in the development of SPECT/CT and PET/CT, since its beginnings in the late 1990s and is author of three textbooks on Hybrid Imaging and over 210 scientific peer-reviewed articles. She has lead the training of physicians and scientists in her department, in Israel and throughout the international Nuclear Medicine community. She serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. She is a Fellow of the SNMMI and Honorary Member of the EANM, received the Life Achievement Award of the General Imaging Council and the Barry Siegel Lecturship of the Correlative Imaging Councils of the SNMMI. She is a consultant for Molecular Imaging for General Electric Healthcare.

Helen Nadel is a dual board -certified pediatric radiologist and Nuclear Medicine physician in the USA and Canada. Dr. Nadel has practiced at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia between the years 1983 – 2018  and is currently employed at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. She has been working with general and hybrid nuclear medicine studies in children in a fully integrated department of Pediatric Radiology and has been lecturing to promote pediatric Nuclear Medicine for her entire career. Dr. Nadel uses PET/MRI exclusively for hybrid PET imaging at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University (LPCH) and co-directs its clinical PET/MRI program. She is a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine and a past member of many committees and boards related to both her Nuclear Medicine and pediatric radiology expertise.  She is a recipient of the Achievement Award from the European Society of Pediatric Nuclear Medicine and the Conway-Treves Senior Investigator Award of the Pediatric Imaging Council of the SNMMI.  She has been inducted as a Fellow of the SNMMI and the American College of Nuclear Medicine and will be the 2023-2024 President of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.