Glossary
Nuclear Medicine Technologist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential nuclear medicine technologist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key nuclear medicine technologist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in nuclear medicine technologist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ALARA
- Keep exposure low.
- Bone scan
- Imaging of bone activity.
- Dose calibrator
- Measures radioactivity.
- FDG
- A sugar tracer for PET.
- Gamma camera
- Detects radiation from tracers.
- Half-life
- Time for half of radioactivity to decay.
- Hot lab
- Room for radioactive materials.
- Myocardial perfusion
- Heart blood flow imaging.
- NMTCB
- Nuclear medicine certification board.
- PET
- Positron emission tomography.
- Radiopharmaceutical
- A radioactive drug for imaging.
- SPECT
- 3D gamma imaging.
- Survey meter
- Detects contamination.
- Technetium-99m
- A common tracer.
- Tracer
- A substance that shows function.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Nuclear Medicine Technologist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Nuclear Medicine Technologist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.