Manipal Hospital's Nuclear Medicine department has introduced the revolutionary imaging modality called Brain SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computerised Tomography) for the first time in Karnataka. The technology will help treat patients with mood disorders, memory loss, epilepsy and schizophrenia and drug abuse. The service is priced at Rs.1,500. The diagnostic procedure gives better results when adopted in conjunction with convention anatomic modalities such as CT scan and MRI or EEG.

The service will benefit patients suffering from various neurological disorders and psychiatry problems. Brain SPECT has also been used during strokes, monitoring or medical and surgical therapies, assessment of cerebral blood flow reserves and interventional sequale and for various ischemic attacks.

"Structural and functional images of the brain play an important role as powerful adjuncts in the management of an increasing number of neurological and psychological diseases. Brain SPECT is being used in the diagnosis and prognosis of assessment, evaluation of response therapy risk satisfaction, detection of benign or malignant tissues and choice of medical or surgical therapy," informed Dr. R V Parameshwaran, head, department of Nuclear Medicine.

A simple half hour procedure with Brain SPECT is conducted in three small steps. A radioactive substance is first injected intravenously which localises the brain in the brain. According to the blood flow in a few minutes. A special camera called gamma then obtains the 3-D images of the brain with clear patterns of blood flow inside it. The nuclear medicine specialists and physicists then study the brain flow and evaluate the image as a whole or in a sliced way to come to right diagnosis. The modality is internationally accepted for diagnosis to prevent irreversible brain damage, identify viable tissue at risk and for screening patients from medical and surgical interventions.

Dr. Parameswaran informed that it is necessary to have better techniques and superior resolution to understand the functioning and structuring of human brain and detect subtle differences in the cells that characterize psychiatric illnesses and neuro diseases which will prove to be a boon to both patients and medical practitioners."