Use of diagnostic radionuclides in medicine.

The purpose of this paper is to follow the course of historical development in the use of radiopharmaceuticals as a diagnostic tool in nuclear medicine. This course has been a series of plateaus and growth spurts throughout its history. This article is designed to identify the different phases of the development of nuclear medicine, pointing out the events which most shaped its history along the way. Those events included such things as the discovery of radioactivity, the development of the cyclotron and nuclear reactor as a method of producing high specific activity radioactive material, the development of imaging equipment such as the rectilinear scanner, scintillation camera, PET and SPECT, the application of computers, and the discovery of 99mTc and the development of associated kits designed to image many organs and processes in the human body.