What's a PET Scan?

Positron Emission Tomography is another extremely sophisticated computer that monitors actual nuclear explosions that are occurring inside your body as Positrons (Anti-Matter) and Electrons (normal stuff in all of our atoms) are "fatally attracted" to each other at the speed of light and then annihilate themselves -- B*O*O*M!! It's really pretty quiet when it happens, but these are real nuclear events. This is real Sci-Fi stuff ... it sounds almost unbelieveable but it's true!!

You're given an injection of Nucleotides that are attached to a glucose base, which is attracted to functioning parts of the body that use glucose with their normal metabolism. These areas of the body "glow" with the explosions of anti-matter destruction and the radiation that is given off and this is what the machines detect. Tumors have an excessively high level of metabolic uptake, so they glow like spotlights on the final images. There's a great site with Pet Information at Healthline.

These imaging machines are made by several companies, with the ones from GE Medical Systems being among the best... the Advance Scanner was the system that I had laid in at Madison in the Spring of 2000 for about an hour; see the GE Story?

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