ABSTRACT
The specialty of nuclear medicine is relatively recent compared with the use of X-rays in diagnosis and therapy and of radium in therapy, in that it effectively dates from the Manhattan Project in World War II, which led in peacetime to the production of artificially produced radioactive isotopes in sufficient quantity for medical applications. Physician specialists in nuclear medicine, as distinct from radiology, also began to appear in hospitals during the late 1960s and the early 1970s, but the structural organisation of this specialty varied widely in different countries. Whole body counters measure the total radioactivity in the body and in nuclear medicine and physics departments they are used principally to measure directly the variation in the retention of an administered radionuclide with time. Quality control and quality assurance are essential not only for radiopharmaceuticals but also for nuclear medicine instrumentation and to achieve this, test objects are required for instruments such as rectilinear scanners and gamma cameras.
