Thirty years from now: future physics contributions in nuclear medicine

BACKGROUND: This paper is the first in a series of invited perspectives by pioneers of nuclear medicine imaging and physics. A medical physicist and a nuclear medicine physician each take a backward and a forward look at the contributions of physics to nuclear medicine. Here, we provide a forward look from the medical physicist’s perspective. DISCUSSION: The author examines a number of developments in nuclear medicine and discusses the ways in which physics has contributed to these. Future developments are postulated in the context of an increasingly personalised approach to medical diagnostics and therapies. CONCLUSIONS: A skill set for the next generation of medical physicists in nuclear medicine is proposed in the context of the increasing complexity of ‘Molecular Imaging’ in the next three decades. The author sees a shift away from ‘traditional’ roles in instrumentation QA to more innovative approaches in understanding radiobiology and human disease.