Some of you may be curious about this. For those that aren't? Sweet.
I'm a radiology resident. That means i'm learning how to be a radiologist. I have 13 different 4-week rotations per year - the rotations are through different anatomy and methods of imaging. For instance, Chest, Neuro, Abdominal CT, Abdominal Ultrasound, Pediatrics, Nuclear Medicine, Musculoskeletal, Breast, Interventional, Gastrointestinal Fluoroscopy. Well, actually that's all of them.
Right now, I'm on nuclear medicine. It is a unique specialty in that it is all about imaging the patient from the inside instead of the outside. Basically we inject a radioactive particle that is usually connected to a biological molecule, and then measure the radioactive signal that the stuck particle gives off from inside the body.
Got it? Riiiight...
So for example, attach radioactive fluorine to some sugar, and inject it. Anywhere that sugar goes, you'll be able to detect the signal given off by the fluorine. Cancers are really active and consume a lot of sugar. So they give off a high signal, and you can find little cancers that have spread places in the body you normally couldn't see with a CAT scan or MRI even.
Here is a case I just looked at:
On the left is a front (anterior) view, on the right is a back (posterior) view of the same person. Click to enlarge.
This is called a bone scan. We used a radioactive material called Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) and attached it to a molecule called MDP (which contains phosphate), and it attaches to calcium. So anywhere you have a lot of calcium activity (i.e. bones) you are going to get a radioactive signal from Tc-99m.
The above was from a 9-year old boy. He had some back pain or something, anyway, that part was negative for any findings. The cool part is the growth plates. Can you see the really bright lines on the knees and shoulders and ankles (and a couple other places)? That means there is a lot of activity there. Pretty cool, right? When you get to be 16-18 or so, those lines fade away as the growth plates close up and stop their activity.
Anyway, so what do I do? I think that was the original question. I sit at a desk with a computer with 3-6 monitors. I have a list of all the patients that need nuclear medicine studies to be read. Then, I load them up and dictate (voice recognition software) what I think into the microphone. Then the attending radiologist (my boss) comes by and tells me what I thought that was wrong. Then I fix what I did wrong and submit it. Yay! It's actually pretty enjoyable for me. Oh, there's also conferences and stuff. And I have to study a lot at night.
But overall, this has been a pretty cool rotation. The volume is low, so there is a lot of time during the workday to learn and discuss cases. Or blog about your job. Shhhhhhh...
