Upgradation of nuclear medical equipment in the developing countries and its impact in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has thirteen Nuclear Medical Centres and one Institute of Nuclear Medicine in the country which are being run and maintained by the physicians scientists and engineers of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. The peaceful application of atomic energy was initiated through all these Centres with the use of clinical isotopes for thyroid and kidney studies. The equipment used for these purposes were the thyroid uptake system, rectilinear scanner and the multiprobe renogram system. The first gamma camera was installed in the country in 1980 at the Institute of Nuclear Medicine, Dhaka. That was the turning point for the country in the field of nuclear medicine. Presently all the nuclear medical establishments are equipped least with a gamma camera, thyroid uptake system and a renogram system. In the last two decades there has been a tremendous development in the design of nuclear medical equipment. Most of the old equipments were slow and manually operated. In the beginning of nineties of the past century there was an uprising in the computer technology and most of the manually operated machines were brought under computerization. It was basically done with a custom built processor to perform only the specific job and spare the users from doing some extra manual work. But the performances of the recent models of the same computerized equipment are by far the best as compared with the past ones. This report describes the role of the IAEA in the upgradation of medical equipment, PC interfacing, upgrading of old gamma cameras and the technological and socio-economic impact in Bangladesh