Nuclear medicine

Nuclear medicine involves using radioactivity to diagnose and treat a wide variety of disorders in people of all ages. The department also provides a DEXA service for bone density measurement.

The service is one of the busiest in the UK, routinely performing a wide range of nuclear medicine diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. We work in close liaison with the referring consultants as well as the radiology and haematology departments, the neuroendocrine unit and other clinical specialists within the hospital to provide a comprehensive clinical nuclear medicine service.

“We have put a lot of effort in making the PET-CT suite at the Royal Free patient-centred, with a calm relaxing atmosphere and a state-of-the-art facility. Patients also have the possiblity of playing their own music during the resting time after injection and of choosing the lighting during the scan to make sure they have a comfortable experience in our department. Our team of technologists and doctors are highly trained, friendly and respectful and strive to make patients feel at ease during their time with us.”

Dr Thomas Wagner
MD, MSc
Consultant in Nuclear Medicine
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

Services, treatments and diagnostics

Nuclear medicine – PET imaging
The Royal Free Hospital is running a state of the art PET/CT service providing scans for patients with malignancy, inflammatory and infectious diseases and neurological disorders. PET/CT is an innovative nuclear medicine diagnostic technique combining functional and anatomical information. Radiation from a tracer is detected by a ring of detectors (PET: functional information) and fused with anatomical information from the CT. The most widely used tracer is fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). It is an analogue of sugar and is taken up by cancer cells and inflammation. We work closely with the referring clinicians and provide a fast turnaround high quality service. We offer scans with FDG for patients with malignancy (lung, lymphoma, colorectal and others), inflammatory and infectious conditions (pyrexia of unknown origin, tuberculosis, large vessel vasculitis, infection) and neurological disorders (memory loss, cognitive impairment and dementia). We also offer PET-CT scans with 68Gallium-dotatate for patients with neuroendocrine tumours and with fluorocholine for patients with prostate cancer.

The nuclear medicine department has opened the new PET centre in May 2013. We aim to use a range of tracers to provide dedicated high quality imaging to our patients. We will be scanning cancer patients and patients with inflammatory and infectious conditions.

Nuclear medicine leaflets can be found in the patient information library.

For more information about the nuclear medicine services offered at the Royal Free Private Patients Unit, please call or email on:

Tel: 020 7317 7751
Email: rf-tr.privateenquiries@nhs.net