Nuclear Medicine

Karen Mourtzikos, MD, Acting Section Chief

In Nuclear Medicine, radiolabeled tracers are employed to diagnose and treat disease. In making a diagnosis, minute amounts of radioactive materials are introduced into the body. The tracers, which migrate to specific organs or tissues, produce emissions that can be captured by imaging devices, such as PET or SPECT scanners. The resultant images yield unique and detailed information about the structure and function of the organs or tissues in question, such as the location of a tumor and the extent of perfusion in the tumor. As a result, many diseases and cancers can be diagnosed much earlier than with other imaging techniques.

Our facilities are equipped with state-of-the-art imaging equipment, including four dual-headed gamma cameras and a high resolution PET-CT scanner.

We see patients with a wide variety of diseases and disorders, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, cancer, thyroid disorders, neurologic diseases (such as epilepsy, stroke, and memory loss), and gastrointestinal disease. Our laboratory is one of very few that studies patients with lymphedema. In addition, we offer treatment with radioactive iodine for patients with hyperthyroidism and thyroid cancer and radioimmunotherapy for patients with low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Our PET/CT scanner is state-of-the art and used for a full range of oncologic and neurologic applications.

Our research team is working with chemists, molecular biologists, and pharmacologists to develop tumor imaging and therapy agents. In this context, we are studying the interaction of radiolabeled antibodies with chemotherapeutic agents and other modulators of cell activity. We expect to begin a trial of radiolabeled antibody combined with oral capecitabine to treat patients with metastatic or recurrent breast cancer. We also have begun to target the tumor matrix with a unique peptide developed by a researcher here in Radiation Oncology at NYU. Our expectation is that this peptide can be labeled, administered to patients with tumors, and imaged using either a gamma camera or PET scanner to characterize tumor behavior and to assess the tumors' sensitivity to therapeutics.