A Potential Gateway to the Diagnosis of Chronic Diseases: Radioisotopes of Thallium

This study highlights about biomedical use of radioisotopes of Thallium. Radioisotopes are generally used to detect cracks in heavy mechanical systems, leak detection in long pipelines, and detect nuclear activities from nuclear weapons. Now a days, nuclear medicine is a specialized area of radiology that uses very small amounts of radioactive materials, or radiopharmaceuticals inside the body, to examine organ function and structure for diagnosis or to target and destroy damaged or diseased organs or tissue. Presently, different types of radionuclides are available, which include forms of the element technetium, thallium, gallium, iodine, and xenon but out of these thallium's radioisotope plays a crucial role in diagnosing chronic ailments like coronary artery disease (CAD) caused myocardial infarction, ischemia, etc. These diseases cause specific muscles or arteries to die or get blocked. Thallium acts as a radiopharmaceutical agent used for various purposes like purpose of CAD, parathyroid activity, coronary artery ischemia, and lymphoma. Out of the radioisotopes of thallium (201Tl) is best suited for diagnosing such diseases by tomography techniques like Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT). In this chapter, an overview of how thallium can be used in a nuclear medicine to test the stress level in CAD mechanism of action as a tracer and perfusion imaging test by using SPECT is given. Diagnosis of Heart Conditions which help physicians identify regions of the heart that may be damaged or stressed, in Stress Testing by assessing the severity of coronary artery blockages and identifying areas of reduced perfusion during stress.