Nuclear medicine

Canada is a leader in nuclear medicine – the use of radioisotopes to treat cancer, to help diagnose illness, and to sterilize medical equipment.

For many years, Canadian-produced medical isotopes for nuclear medicine have been used for about 50,000 procedures each day. Many of these are performed on Canadian patients.

There are more than 100 diagnostic applications using nuclear medical isotopes.

Atomic Energy of Canada's NRU reactor at Chalk River is capable of producing half of the world's medical isotopes. These are processed by MDS Nordion, which provides a number of nuclear medicine applications:

• innovative targeted cancer treatments for a variety of conditions including liver and brain cancer, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma;
• technologies for medical imaging, which help doctors diagnose and treat a multitude of diseases including cardiac and neurological conditions, as well as several types of cancer;
• sterilization of medical devices.